PHYTOGRAPHIC EXPRESSIONS AND ARRANGEMENTS. 195 



to fruits of totally different structures) have not been thought 

 requisite for the new publication, although occasionally an adjective 

 has in these instances been added, to render the simple 

 expressions, thus far used by the writer, more explicit when 

 specially desirable. The next difficulty, which presented itself in 

 bringing out in a popular form the " Dichotomous Key to the 

 System of Victorian Plants," consisted in choosing such expressions 

 for vestiture as could at once be understood, even by disciples of 

 ■elementarv schools, and which nevertheless should be scientifically 

 accurate also. Here it should be stated then, that the terms for 

 degree and quality of indument are as yet of notable indefiniteness, 

 •even in some of the best " Floras " of the world, partly on account 

 of the brevity of expression, partly because from want of that 

 uniformity for fixing the value of botanic terms, which BischofFs 

 great work previously strove to bring about long before the middle 

 of this century. But in an endeavour of severing zoographic and 

 phytographic expressions, we must at once recognize, that the 

 vestiture of plants and animals is chemically very different, as may 

 be ascertained in a moment by heating any such over a spirit- 

 lamp on a platinum-plate ; and further that the animal and the 

 vegetable indument are not quite alike either in structure or 

 development. Thus I felt induced to substitute as comprehensive 

 the botanic word hairlet against the general zoologic term hair, 

 to which latter all capillaceous coating of animals can be reduced, 

 though for instance the hair of many insects may be even infinitely 

 smaller and also much more delicate than the hairlets of a vast 

 number of various plants. Admittedly in such a course shortness 

 of expression becomes to some extent sacrificed, in as much as one 

 or more explanatory adjectives are required for recording the 

 characteristics of the various kinds of hairlets, which constitute 

 any sort of clothing on plants. What however is lost in brevity, 

 is gained by greater explicity ; and I have ventured to carry this 

 new mode of dealing descriptively with vestiture so far, as to 

 discontinue the words silky, downy, webby, plumous, ciliate, 

 bearded, all pertaining to zoology, using instead only wordings 

 fairly referable to vegetable organisms, such as fringy, cottony &c, 

 or changing the absolute to the comparative term in substituting 

 " beset with silk-like hairJets " for silky, or beard-like-tufted for 

 bearded, or ciliolate for ciliate, or lanuginous for woolly, already 

 Plinius having distinguished in this very sense lanuginosus from 

 lanosus ! In further elucidation of this subject it might still be 

 mentioned, that the following English diminutives have now 

 universally been acknowledged as correct for descriptive botanic 

 works : Branchlets, Leaflets, Lobules, Petiolules, Stipulets or 

 Stipelles, Pedicelles, Bractlets or Bracteoles, Um beliefs or 

 Umbellules, Involucelles, Spikelets, Rhacheoles, Silicules and 



