82 PINACE^. 



istic way; and kno-wing well that had the chieftain of the chiefs in 

 battle, the man of men in the arts of warfare, whose greatness con- 

 sisted in his sense and system, who made men for places not places for 

 men, who generally put the right man in the right place, and when 

 right kept him there ; and who generally called a sword a sword ; who 

 scarcely ever put the rider before the horse, or the private before the 

 sergeant, or the sergeant before the captain, but had a place for every 

 one and every one in his place ; had he, I say, been consulted upon this 

 casus belli, Wellingtonia Gigantea versus Gigantahies Wellingtoniana, 

 he would have decided in favour of the latter appellation for this tree ; 

 and so methinks will all my readers of the practical and common sense 

 class. Be that as it may, however, this naming of trees seems from 

 the modern modus operandi to favour the idea that, that which we 

 call " a rose by any other name would smell as sweet ;" which being so, 

 it may be inferred that, the mammoth fir by any other name would 

 grow as big ; for our American cousins call it Americanus Giganteus 

 and WasMngtonia Americana ; such nomenclature of the vegetable 

 kingdom is pardonable, and may induce a smile, in the land of 

 " Shoddy" and " Oil Springs," where they " beat creation out of time;" 

 but that Wellingtonia Gigantea should be tolerated by such a utili- 

 tarian people, so thoroughly practical, and so professedly learned and 

 refined as the British, seems a little paradoxical ; for such latinizing of 

 a tree into a man or a man into a tree, or the egregious blunder of 

 canonizing a departed hero into a giant who never was one, could 

 scarcely have been perpetrated, unless the hyperbolic author of such a 

 caricature was in the mental mood where pedantry is rampant ; for 

 methinks that Gigantahies Wellingtoniana, (Wellington's Giant Fir,) 

 is not only more euphonical, but more in keeping with that oft 

 despised virtue, common sense ; and more consonant with my ideas 

 of the great and good, or the true and beautiful. The naming species 

 or varieties of trees after men or women, or as complimentary tribute 

 to a departed hero, I can perfectly understand and fully appreciate ; 

 but to behold science, as it were, dethroned, and not unlike a syco- 

 phant crouching on flattery's footstool, and language prostituted in 

 such servile truckhng of Generic Titles ; which I consider the highest 

 attributes; nay, the natural birthright; heaven's own gift; and this alike 

 with all names of genera, whether of the animal, vegetable, or mineral 

 kingdoms : such trafficking in Generic IS^ames I cannot appreciate. 



This tree, then, is thoroughly hardy, though showing slight 

 symptoms of constitutional disease or decay ; which, however, I am 



