OAKS AT ALDENHAM. 



157 



is also a fact that some years ago, in the then most famous of English 

 nurseries, their propagator was found engaged on the fruitless task 

 of grafting the Wych Hazel (Hamamelis) on the common Hazel 

 (Corylus). Perhaps the worst conceivable type of nomenclature is 

 where, as in the case of the popular and flower-shop use of Syringa, 

 the scientific name of one genus, the Lilacs, is perversely applied to 

 another, viz. the Philadelphia or ' Mock Orange.' There is not the 

 excuse of Philadelphus being one of those outlandish jaw-breaking 

 words which occur in botany, for, owing to the occurrence of a similar 

 name in the Bible, and in Pennsylvania, one would have thought that 

 it was fairly familiar to all. 



Though I can see great advantage in having generally-accepted 

 scientific names for plants themselves, I can see none in English and 

 American botanists using Latin and Greek words to describe the shape 

 and other characteristics of those plants, where there is no gain in 

 precision, and, to many, a sad loss of intelligibility. I realize the 

 commercial advantage to the medical profession of veiling their 

 prescriptions in the obscurity of a dead language, and indeed Fiat 

 haustus may have an actual curative effect by suggestion, and by 

 arousing in the patient a sense of increased confidence in the learning 

 and wisdom of the leech. Why, however, should a botanist desire 

 to prevent a zealous, if imperfectly educated, gardener or amateur 

 from understanding his descriptions? There is much to be said for 

 writing scientific treatises in Latin, and so appealing to men of culture 

 out of every nation, but nothing that I can see for writing English 

 heavily " maculated " with Greek and Latin. Who is the gainer 

 by reading a farrago like the following ? — ■ 



" Dalopsis Jacksonac* An arborescent caryotaceous stoloniferons g]areose 

 plant, with a ramose divaricate head, and glabrous rubiginose subfuscous cortical 

 parenchyma ; coriaceous piJosiusculous foliage of dolabriform or clypeate shape, 

 cuneate base, and mucronulate lobes, having ciliate or fimbriated margins, and 

 abbreviated petioles, xanthous coloration marmorated with ochroleucous 

 maculations, a verrucose and psoraleous superior surface, the inferior being 

 covered with inspissated farinose tomentum, and coarctate capillary filaments ; 

 producing dehiscent hippocrepiform legumes, and elongated cinereous sericeous 

 propendent aments." 



I really do not think that the above is an unfair burlesque of 

 some of the esoteric mysteries into which I have been privileged 

 to penetrate while reading up for this article, and which recall the 

 character in " Love's Labour's Lost," who had " been at a feast of 

 languages and stolen the scraps." Glowing with the pride of composi- 

 tion, I can almost persuade myself that, with a small magnifying glass 

 screwed into one eye, I might pass for a botanist myself. Now let 

 us compare a literal translation of the above, and it will be found 



* The generic name is an attempt to emulate the literary grace"of blending 

 two different languages in one word, as in " Prunopsis," " semecarpifolia," and 

 other botanic names ; the specific one faithfully reproduces a comical modern 

 effort (which would have been absolutely unintelligible to anyone whose tongue 

 was Latin) to indicate that it is not Jackson but Jackson's wife whom it is 

 desired to immortalize. 



