September 24, 1890.] 



Garden and Forest. 



461 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



TUBLISHED WEEKLY BY 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Office : Trirune Building, New York. 



Conducted by Professor C. S. Sargent. 



ENTERED AS SECOND CLASS MATTER AT THE POST OFFICE AT NEW YORK, N. Y. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 1800. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



Editorial Artici.f.s : — The Language of Science. — Enlargement of the Yosemite 



Reservation.— Wasteful Mismanagement of Timber Lands 461 



The American Elm. (With illustration.) 462 



Effect of Forest-Mismanagement on Orchards B. E. Femovv. 462 



September in the Pines Mary Treat. 463 



Botanical Work at the Stations Professor Byron D. Halsted. 463 



New or Little Known Plants : — A New Cornus. (With figure.) 



Professor J. M. Coulter. 464 



Foreign Correspondence: — London Letter W. Watson. 464 



Cultural Department: — Notes on American Plants F. H. Horsford. 466 



The Hardy Flower-Garden .O.O. 466 



Notes on Shrubs J. G. Jack. 468 



Phajus Humblotii John Weathers. 469 



Allamanda Schottii W. Tricker. 469 



Dipladenia atropurpurea, Cyperus Natalensis W. 469 



Grand Mogul and Jean Soupert, La France and Duchess of Albany, 



E. G. Hill. 469 

 Kniphofia (Tritoma) Corallina, H. multiflorus.fl. pl.,Helianthuslaetiflorus, 



Helenium autumnale, Desmodium penduliflorum G. 469 



The Forest: — Preserving Small Forests N. H. Egleston. 470 



Correspondence : — Some Northern Ferns G. U. Hay. ^yi 



Insect Enemies of Ampelopsis A. 471 



Practical Aid for Forests J. B. Harrison. 471 



The Pepino Gtistav Eisen. 471 



Notes '. 472 



Illustrations :— Cornus Baileyi, Fig. 58 , 465 



A Feathered American Elm 467 



The Language of Science. 



NOT long ago we published a complaint that young 

 persons were repelled from the study of botany be- 

 cause of the hard Latin and Greek names which were 

 given to the plants. We have never discovered any basis 

 for this charge, and find no reason to believe that the 

 science would have more devotees under any system of 

 nomenclature which could be devised. It is not meant by 

 this that scientific names of plants could not be improved 

 or that better rules for naming them could not be framed, 

 but there is no evidence that the imperfections of the sys- 

 tem are so serious as to deter any one from studying plants 

 or to hinder to any appreciable extent those who have be- 

 gun the study. A new charge, but one somewhat similar 

 in its character, has recently been made, which perhaps 

 deserves a word of consideration. In his address before the 

 Florists' Convention (see p. 421), Mr. E. S. Carman, while 

 recognizing the necessity of a plant nomenclature of general 

 application, and therefore accepting Greek and Latin names 

 as the best, stated nevertheless that the words which bota- 

 nists use to express processes, conditions, etc., in the life of 

 plants are so absurd, irrational and preposterous that the 

 study of botany is rendered repulsive to these young peo- 

 ple. Mr. Carman's paper was on hybridizing, and to prove 

 his case he cited such words as "dioecious," "monoecious," 

 "gyno-dicecious," " proterandrous," and so on, stigmatiz- 

 ing them as bombastic and abominable. 



In the first place, it may be said that young people, or 

 old people for the matter of that, who study botany as they 

 should, and investigate plants themselves instead of learn- 

 ing lessons from books, have occasion to use scientific 

 language only when they have some scientific ideas to ex- 

 press. ' Just as soon as one has a new idea there comes 

 the necessity for a new word. Mr. Carman himself uses 

 such big words as "organography," "morphology," etc., be- 

 cause he wishes to express a well defined science, and 

 these terms have been selected for that use. He cannot 

 express his meaning so distinctly and concisely in any 



other way, and yet these words are as strange to the illit- 

 erate and to the young person as are any of those he uses 

 to prove his case against the botanists. The fact is that 

 the same charge can be brought against any other study. 

 At the very outset of his arithmetical studies the child must 

 become familiar with such hard words as " multiplicand " 

 and "dividend" and "minuend," and in geography he is im- 

 mediately confronted by "hemisphere" and "meridian," 

 " equator," and many more which are quite as trying to 

 him as any botanical term. There is no need of bringing 

 illustrations from other sciences.- Open any systematic 

 treatise on birds or insects, on geology or medicine, and 

 just as many "hard words" will be found as the botanists 

 use. The reason for this is that scientific language is 

 necessary in a scientific treatise. 



But what do the critics mean by " hard words "? Not 

 long words surely. If this question was pressed a little, 

 perhaps the answer would be "words that are not in com- 

 mon use." But the subjects discussed are not subjects of 

 ordinary conversation, and, therefore, there can be no 

 common word to represent the ideas and processes in 

 question. Perhaps Mr. Carman, who considers "dioecious" 

 a hard word, would say that "deciduous" was an easy 

 one. This is simply because the latter is more frequently 

 used, but to the " young person " who learns them one is 

 quite as easy as the other. But however this may be, the 

 fact remains that it is utterly impossible to write a scientific 

 treatise unless there are specific terms to represent the ob- 

 jects, the attributes and the processes which must come 

 constantly under discussion. The only question is how 

 should the words that are needed be formed. Now, the 

 same reasons which make it advisable to use Latin and 

 Greek for the names of plants, and in fact for technical names 

 in all sciences, would seem to imply that the roots of these 

 universal classics should be used in forming all the new 

 words in scientific language. 



This language is not constructed primarily to make 

 science attractive to the young, but to furnish a means of 

 complete and precise expression for those who are prose- 

 cuting particular studies. Any one with a slight acquaint- 

 ance with Latin and Greek can easily form a word which 

 will accurately express a new idea, and the reader will 

 comprehend its meaning even if he has never seen it be- 

 fore. And many people who have never studied Latin and 

 Greek, but who have become familiar with the roots of cer- 

 tain words which are often used in any given science, 

 can not only understand new terms, but can construct them 

 in correct form. Hugh Miller was not acquainted with 

 any classical language, but he used the Latin and Greek 

 terminology with all the facility of a skilled linguist. 



Of course, all this is elementary doctrine, and there 

 ought to be no necessity for such an argument even in a 

 popular journal. But we believe that botany should be 

 studied much more generally by young people than it is, 

 and, while we have no fears that they will be deterred 

 from it because scientific language is employed, we do 

 have fears that some of them or their parents may be dis- 

 couraged by careless criticisms, which magnify supposed 

 difficulties, or by artful ridicule of the methods of the most 

 advanced students of the science. 



It may be that some of the criticisms upon the man- 

 agement of the Yosemite Reservation have been unduly 

 harsh ; but since the matter has become a subject of gen- 

 eral discussion, and the plain truth is slowly appearing 

 from out the mass of conflicting statements, it is growing- 

 more and more evident that the crowning charm of wild 

 beauty which invests this valley is vanishing as swiftly as 

 possible before the blighting touch of man. The details of 

 the defacement are too sickening to recapitulate; but muti- 

 lated trees, meadows scarred with the plow, and acres of 

 blackened stumps well justify the statement of John 

 Muir, who has known this valley for more than twenty 

 years, when he says in the Century Magazine that every- 

 thing accessible and destructible is going more rapidly to 



