1857.] GLOSSARIES AND NOMENCLATURE. 151 



express more delicately and perspicuously what is understood by 

 the offensive word hermaphrodite, and by the pedantic, barbarous 

 word diclinous. Hermaphrodite^ as applied to plants, expresses 

 exactly what we mean by complete, or perfect; when applied 

 to animals, it means just the reverse. A thing is complete in 

 all its parts; a flower is complete when nothing can be added 

 to it without marring its symmetry or its utility. A hermaphro- 

 dite is the exception among animals ; it is the rule in the vege- 

 table kingdom ; and as Nature's works are generally considered 

 perfect as to the beauty and design of their construction, the 

 plants called hermaphrodite might be described as complete or 

 perfect without any ambiguity, and with more elegance and deli- 

 cacy than when characterized by the disagreeable term above- 

 mentioned, which might, out of deference to the fairer portion of 

 the votaries of Mora, be cashiered without any perceptible incon- 

 venience. The words male and female, as generally applied to 

 barren and fertile, or to incomplete or imperfect blossoms, might 

 also be discarded. Those who object to the terms barren and 

 fertile as descriptive of what are called male and female flowers, 

 might employ stamifdferous and pistilliferous, especially if they 

 like sesquipedalian words and entertain the vulgar maxim. Omnia 

 ignota pro magnificis habentur. The term diclinous is exactly 

 rendered by incomplete or imperfect ; and, for the sake of the 

 unlearned generally, one or other of these equivalents should take 

 the place of the learned barbarism. A second canon or rule 

 might be adopted, to the eftect that two or 7nore technical terms 

 should never be employed to express one state, or one state with 

 a modification. An attempt to describe with an undue amount 

 of precision is too often subversive of the object of scientific 

 description, which is always limited to groups of natural things, 

 never to individuals. The terms deflexed and decurved ; reflexed, 

 recurved; procumbent, decumbent, said prostrate ; stolons, scions, 

 and shoots ; terete, tapering ; sessile, sitting ; dehiscent, opening, 

 etc., will illustrate what is meant. These pairs of epithets, or 

 leashes (threes), are nearly synonymous. There is a distinction 

 between a curve or curvature and a flexure or crooking, bending 

 or bowing : a bending is probably a greater degree of curvature. 

 But Nature does not always, even in the same object, never in a 

 group of objects called species, genera, and orders, construct her 

 curves or flexures of an eqvial number of degrees of declination, 



