PREFACE 
rough one, for to render adequately all that may be conveyed by 
many of the roots is manifestly impossible when a single word 
must serve. The accent has been added in accordance with the 
best discoverable usage ; where pronunciation varies, I have tried 
to follow the best usage; in some words such as “medullary” 
I have given the accent as it is always spoken, though all the 
dictionaries, except Henslow’s, accent it as ‘“med’ullary.” When 
words have become thoroughly anglicised, it would have been 
mere pedantry to accent them otherwise; we say or’ator, not as 
in Latin, orator. The accent does not imply syllabic division, but 
when the accent immediately follows a vowel, that vowel is long; 
if one or more consonants intervene, then the vowel is short ; thus 
ca’nus, cas’sus, as though they were printed cd-nus, céis-sus ; in a few 
instances the pronunciation is also given when the word would 
otherwise be doubtful as to sound. 
It has been my duty to condense the definitions, often a difficult 
matter when a longer explanation would have been far easier to 
draw up. I trust that I have in each case succeeded in setting out 
the main or central meaning, but many writers have their own 
modified or restricted meaning of even well-known terms. To still 
further economise space, words drawn from the same leading word 
have been grouped into paragraphs, thus obviating the necessity of 
repeating the leading word with its meaning many times over, and 
only requiring the additional root to be given; occasionally this 
has led to the intentional neglect of strict alphabetic sequence. 
The names of groups of plants have given much trouble; whilst all 
proposed terms manifestly could not be included, many have be- 
come so often quoted as to demand recognition; as a rule I have 
not admitted groups of even ordinal value, still less of lower rank. 
Compound terms have been left out when intermediate between the 
meaning of the primitives ; those included seem to require mention 
on special grounds. 
Authors’ names in parentheses, following definitions, are those 
who have been taken as authority for such definition, and when 
the actual language is used, it is indicated by quotation marks; 
the authority sometimes coincides with the inventor of the term. 
Substantives in the headings have been shown by the use of a 
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