BOTANICAL OBSERVATIONS, &C. 230. 



allowed, even the critical parts of his admirable works 

 lie continually open. I avail myself of his indulgence, 

 and am very solicitous to give Indian plants their true 

 Indian appellations \ because I am fully persuaded 

 that Linn je us himself would have adopted them, had 

 he known the Learned and ancient language of this 

 country; as he, like all other men, would have re* 

 tained the native names of Asiatic regions and cities, 

 rivers and mountains; leaving friends, or persons of 

 eminence, to preserve their own names by their own 

 merit, and inventing new ones, from distinguishing 

 marks and properties for such objects only as, being 

 ''recently discovered, could have had no previous^ 

 denomination. Far am I from doubting the great 

 importance of perfect botanical descriptions ; for lan- 

 guages expire as nations decay, and the true sense of 

 many appellatives, in every dead language, must 

 be lost in a course of ages : but, as long as those ap- 

 pellatives remain understood, a travelling physician, 

 who should wish to procure an Arabian or Indian 

 plant, and, without asking for it by its learned or 

 vulgar name, should hunt for it in the woods by its 

 botanical character, would resemble a geographer, 

 who, desiring to find his way in a foreign city or 

 province, should never enquire, by name, for a street 

 or a town, but wait with his tables and instruments, 

 for a proper occasion to determine its longitude and 

 latitude. 



The plants described in the following paper by 

 their classical appellations, with their synonyma, or 

 epithets, and their names in' the vulgar dialect^ 



have 



