LINN.EUS. 335 



least I cannot offer you my thanks for what you 

 have done, though I gratefully acknowledge the fa- 

 vour of the copies you have sent me of the Critica 

 as well as the Flora. We all know the nomen- 

 clature of botany to be an Augean stable, which 

 C. Hoffmann, and even Gesner, were not able to 

 cleanse. The task requires much reading, and ex- 

 tensive as well as various erudition ; nor is it to be 

 given up to hasty or careless hands. You rush up- 

 on it, and overturn every thing. I do not object to 

 Greek words, especially in compound names ; but I 

 think the names of the ancients ought not rashly 

 and promiscuously to be transferred to our new ge- 

 nera, or those of the New World. The day may 

 possibly come when the plants of Theophrastus and 

 Dioscorides may be ascertained ; and, till this hap- 

 pens, we had better leave their names as we find 

 them. That desirable end might even now be at- 

 tained, if any one would visit the countries of these 

 old botanists, and make a sufficient stay there ; for 

 the inhabitants of those regions are very retentive of 

 names and customs, and know plants at this mo- 

 ment by their ancient appellations, very little al- 

 tered, as any person who reads Belonius may per- 

 ceive. I remember your being told, by the late 

 Mr G. Gherard, that the modern Greeks give the 

 name of amanita (a/xav/ra) to the eatable field- 

 mushroom ; and yet, in Critica Botanica, p. 50, you 

 suppose that word to be French. Who will ever 

 believe the Thya of Theophrastus to be our arbor 

 vitae ? Why do you give the name of cactus to the 

 tuna } Do you believe the tuna, or melocactus (par- 

 don the word), and the arbor vitae, were known 

 to Theophrastus.^ An attentive reader of the de- 



