SOME QUESTIONS OF NOMENCLATURE. 467 



old ones. If there were iu these cases any resemblance between your 

 plants and those of the antients you might be excused, but there is not. 

 Why do you (p. OS) derive the word Med lea from the virtues of the plant, 

 when Pliny (Book XVIII, chap. 16) declares it to have been brought 

 from Media? Why do you call the Molucca Molucella? It does not, 

 nor ought it, to owe that name, as is commonly thought, to the Molucca 

 Islands, for, as Lobel informs us, the name and the plant are of Asiatic 

 origin. Why, then, do you adopt a barbarous name and make it more 

 barbarous? BiscuteUa is not, as you declare qi. 118), a new name, hav- 

 ing already been used by Lobel. I am surprised that you do not give 

 the etymology of the new names which you or others have introduced. 

 I wish you would help me to the derivation of some that I can not 

 trace, as Ipomwa, for instance. Why are you so offended with some 

 words, which you denominate barbarous, though many of them are 

 more harmonious than others of Greek or Latin origin 1? 



A year later (August 28, 1738) he again wrote: 



It would surely have been worth your while to visit Greece, or Asia, 

 that you might become acquainted with, and point out to us, the plants 

 of the antients, whose appellations you have so materially, and worse 

 than any other person, misapplied. You ought to be very cautious in 

 changing names and appropriating them to particular genera. 



How entirely the previsions of the wise old botanist have been realized 

 I need not explain. We now know what almost all of the names mis- 

 applied by Linnaeus and his school were meant for of old; and when 

 some more good naturalists collect names and specimens together in 

 various parts of Greece, probably very few of the ancient names will 

 remain unidentifiable. 



The only reply that Linnaeus could make to the censures of Dillenius 

 appears in the following minutes: 



With regard to unoccupied names in antient writers, which I have 

 adopted for other well-defined genera, I learned this of you. You, 

 moreover, long ago, pointed out to me that your own Draba, Nova PI. 

 Genera 122, is different from the plant so called by Dioscorides. 



The retort of one sinner that his antagonist is another is no real 

 answer. 



The comments of the British committee of 1865 on this subject are 

 very judicious and pertinent. 



The use of mythological names for animals and plants is far less cul- 

 pable. The use of such is no worse than that of any meaningless name. 

 Sometimes, even, there may be conveyed an association of ideas which 

 appeals to the imagination in a not disagreeable manner. For example, 

 Linnams gave the name Andromeda, after the Ethiopian maid whose 

 mother's overgreat boasts of the daughter's beauty made her the vic- 

 tim of Poseidon's wrath. Linnseus justified his procedure by a remark- 

 able play of fancy : 



This most choice and beautiful virgin gracefully erects her long and 

 shining neck (the peduncle), her face with its rosy lips (the corolla) far 

 excelling the best pigment. She kneels on the ground with her feet 

 bound (the lower part of the stem incumbent), surrounded with water, 



