General Notices. 419 



Latin of Willow for his convenience. And since Prof. Owen's authority 

 has been introduced into the question, we must add that we claim him for 

 a good witness on our own side. Let any one turn over the pages of his 

 beautiful work on fossil reptiles, and see how sedulously he shuns the hard 

 words of technical science wherever he can. He talks of the Gavial, the 

 African constrictor, tiger-boa, sea-snake and common snake, and not of 

 Gavialis, Dixoni, Python reghis, Pijlhon tigris, HydropMs hicolor, or Coluber 

 natrix. Every one must, we think, desire that he had carried this further — 

 substituting snakestone for ophiolite, and so on. 



We remark that onp of our correspondents is alarmed lest his Crocuses 

 should degenerate into Crokes, and therefore he Avould compel people to go 

 on for ever breaking their teeth against the angles of our Grreco-Latin 

 compounds. But his fears are groundless ; Crocus is a name not likely to 

 be disturbed ; and if it were, the change would not be more disastrous than 

 that of Hyacinthuses into Hyacinths. In spite, therefore, of this warning, 

 Ave venture to recommend that on all possible occasions, the technical 

 proper names of science be adapted to our own tongue, where familiar 

 names do not exist. It will be found an important means of diffusing a 

 taste for natural history, and need not shock the sensibilities of the most 

 tight-laced stickler for scientific formalism. Calycanths are as good as 

 Calycanthitses, Hyacinths as Hyacintliiises, Perymenes as Ferymeniums, 

 and Glossocards as Glossocardi'a^. 



But wJiile we recommend the abandonment of translations of teclmical 

 proper names, we must insist upon what is the greatest point of all, the 

 translation, wherever possible, of the adjectives used in the binomial sys- 

 tem, and of all adjective terms whatsoever for which English equivalents can 

 be found. This is, however, opening a new and perfectly distinct question, 

 for which we must crave a second hearing. — [Gard. Chron., 1850, p. 467.) 



On the differknce between Geraniums and Pelargoniums. — 

 The most beautiful of flowers is, by common consent, the rose ; one of the 

 next is, perhaps, the pelargonium. The rose has the advantage of all others 

 in possessing a sweet scent ; but in the beauty of color it shares with many, 

 for the various shades of red are all more or less beautiful, and not merely 

 because tliey are good contrasts to green, for in that case they would not be 

 beautiful alone, which they decidedly are. Now beauty of color, like that 

 of form, is of two kinds, — that which is primitive or intrinsic, and that whicli 

 is secondary or representative. The beauty of pink and rose-color, or light 

 red, is in most flowers, and in many otlier cases, only secondary or imitative, 

 because it represents what in fruit is indicative of perfection and ripeness, 

 qualities which are esteemed useful or afford wholesome gratification. The 

 same color is esteemed beautiful when it graces the object of man's highest 

 admiration ; for then it is a mark of liealth and pleasure, especially when 

 not heightened beyond what the poet calls the " bloom of young desire, 

 the purple light of love." It is, tlierefore, the associations tliat attend the 

 appearance of this color in flowers to which their beauty is to be attributed, 

 as, in poetry, that language is the most admired which expresses itself with 

 the most apt allusions. Many varieties of pelargoniums possess various 



