270 CREDULITY, CULINARY AND CURATIVE. 
the word Tribe (from 777, three, and bus, family), implying kindred in 
_character, descent, structure, does not warrant its stretching to cover 
and include plants that are superficially similar in some odour, or 
taste, or use. Some snails are alliaceous, but they are not on that 
account either ordinary or extraordinary members of the Alliums. 
Again (p. 360), what is a ‘weak, sleepy sort of smell?’ Mullein 
the adjectives were misplaced. The poet’s license to be ambiguous, 
and maunder circumambiently as to his meaning, as where Macbeth 
Says ‘the heaven’s breath smells wooingly,’ does not hold in science, 
any more than a writ in another country from that in which taken 
out 
But a still looser use of words occurs under Sundew. That 
semi-carnivorous marsh plant, with stalked leaf-blades springing from 
a centre on the ground like the spokes of a wheel, bears, we are told, 
‘a cluster of hairy leaves in a stellate form at the top of a slender 
stem!’ That misdescription ‘ bangs Banagher’ in its ineptitude— 
the ribs of an umbrella in a shower would serve their purpose as well 
or ill as the indication of shape and arrangement above quoted does 
its subject. 
As for diction, we note the use of some curious jaw-breaking 
words. Lectimingous, as applied to the children’s Piss-a-bed of the 
Spring, and to the Daffodil, is a triumph in ‘nice’ expression. 
Inimicous, for enemy-to, quoted from Evelyn, is another strange 
face, though not so larmoyant, provocative of laughter unto tears, as 
the first-named pedanticism ! 
€ chapter on Saffron (meadow and cultivated) mixes up 
terribly the non-related Colchicum Lily and the Crocus of the Irid 
order. An allied mess is made of the Garden Rue, Gerarde being 
quoted as a trustworthy ‘doctor’ for. the statement that the ‘ Wild 
Rue is found on the hills of Lancashire and Yorkshire, being more 
vehement in smell and in Operation than the Garden Rue.’ Gerarde 
romservalism, not reform, but, if true and still in vogue, is a very 
curious and significant bit of information. 
pace will not allow us to Spread out our dissection further, and 
me SF€ sory to have. to write in such a strain at all. Full o 
Information, alas! of the sort that is of little use to anybody, the 
Naturalist, 
