BE CANDOLLE'S PHYTOGRAPHY. 297 



box fashion," and should not be understood if we did, but we 

 adopt the Linnaean Latin " circumcissile." In general, De 

 Candolle concludes that a vernacular term, whether the name 

 of an organ or of a botanical group, which will not enter into 

 a Latin text by a modification of its termination, is not scien- 

 tific, and may give place to one which is. 



A few terms are mentioned which have been more or less 

 changed in meaning since the time of Linnaeus ; such as 

 lanceolate, which has gradually varied more or less, and for 

 a part of the change the present writer is held to account ; 

 also glaucus, which classically means sea-green in hue, but 

 which has been generally used in botany to designate some- 

 times a certain whitishness, and sometimes a whitishness 

 caused by a minute Avaxy exudation in the form of a powder : 

 the latter is the same as pruinosus. Others may be as sur- 

 prised as we were to learn that neither glaucus nor pruinosus 

 are Linnaean terms. 



Among the terms used ambiguously, it is surprising that 

 De Candolle does not refer to pint ilium, first introduced into 

 botany by Tournefort, and used in the sense of the modern 

 term gynoeciinn, therefore only one to a flower ; modified by 

 Ludwig to denote a female member of the flower (having 

 ovary, stigma, and commonly a style), of which there may be 

 several or many in a flower ; and adopted in the latter sense 

 by Linnaeus, yet generally with a use that avoids contradicting 

 the sense of Tournefort. Mirbel, Moquin-Tandon, and St. 

 Hilaire among the French, have openly departed from Tourne- 

 fort's use, and speak freely of pistils in the plural. Brown 

 and De Candolle have used the word in the manner of Ludwig 

 and Linnaeus when they have used it at all, but have generally 

 evaded its use ; other botanists, especially British, have gone 

 back to the Tournefortian sense of gynoeciurn. The present 

 writer has a note on the subject in the new edition of his 

 " Structural Botany " (1879 and 1880), p. 16G. 



Sinistrorse and dextrorse in the direction of ascent of 

 climbing stems or the overlapping of parts in a bud, etc. — 

 De Candolle had formerly insisted upon the desirability of 

 following what he takes to be the authority and practice of 



