206 REVIEWS. 



as we do that of a genus or species, only when it is positively 

 contrary to the truth, or when it has been pre-occupied. 



(4) Avoid giving special names for rare or ill-definable 

 cases of structure. An epithet or short periphrasis is vastly 

 preferable to a new and strange term, which will be seldom 

 used and may be hardly understood. De Candolle truly re- 

 marks that after a great multiplication of terms and distinc- 

 tions generally comes some good generalization, which does 

 away with a crowd,of particular names ; that what has hap- 

 pened in carpology is likely to occur for microscopic organs ; 

 and he adds : " Nous assistons au ' feu d'artifice ' d'une 

 trentaine de noms de ces etats des cellules " [in our verna- 

 cular, we have seen them "go up"] ; "il en restera seule- 

 ment quelques-uns generaux ou frequents, qui seront toujours 

 necessaires." 



(5) Between two or more names choose, not the most 

 agreeable, or even the most significant, but the one best 

 known and most widely recognized. 



(6) Between names equally known and used, adopt the 

 oldest. Which are the older names is not difficult to know 

 in the case of common organs, but is very much so in modern 

 histology. 



(7) In this matter of priority or of usage, consider only 

 names taken from [or in conformity with] Latin or Greek. 

 As in systematic botany, scientific and not vulgar names are 

 to be accounted in this regard. Those who like spaltoffming 

 for stoma or stomate, and scheitehelle, must needs follow 

 their own fashion ; but the genius of our own and the French 

 language resists their importation, while it adopts or adapts 

 with ease technical terms from classical sources. 



(8) Not to admit names contrary to these rules. 

 Chapter XIV. surveys some difficulties in phytography 



which arise from the variant, changed, or contradictory use 

 of certain botanical terms, and from the employment of 

 vernacular terms which cannot be latinized. The latter has 

 just been referred to incidentally. Even the French describe 

 the dehiscence of a certain kind of capsule as " en boite a 

 savonette." In English we do not attempt to say "in soap- 



