106 
ORGANOGRAPHY. 
BOOK I. 
had not received much attention ; the terms just mentioned 
had been contrived to express certain of the most striking 
forms of venation ; but the application of these was far from 
being sufficiently precise. Many improvements have been pro- 
posed by modern botanists ; it however appears to me that the 
whole nomenclature of venation is essentially defective, and 
requires complete revision. My ideas upon this subject have 
been already laid before the public in the Botanical Register 
for Sept. 1826, page 1004.; and, as I am not aware that any 
objection to them has yet been taken, I shall repeat them here, 
in a form better adapted to an elementary work than that 
imder which they first appeared. 
The objections that I take to the present modes of distin- 
guishing veins are these: — 1st, That the veins are very im- 
properly, as I think, called nerves, either in all cases, as by 
Link, which is bad, or in certain cases only, when they have 
a particular size or direction, as by Linnaeus and his followers, 
which is worse. Nothing is more destructive of accurate 
ideas in natural history than giving names well understood in 
one kingdom of nature to organs in another kingdom of an 
entirely different kind, unless it is the, perhaps, more repre- 
hensible practice of giving two names conveying totally differ- 
ent ideas to the same organ in the same kingdom of nature. 
Thus, when the veins of a plant are termed nerves, it is neces- 
sarily understood that they exercise functions of a similar 
nature to those of the nerves of animals : if otherwise, why are 
they so called ? But they exercise no such functions, being, 
beyond all doubt, mere channels for the transmission of fluid. 
Again, if one portion of the skeleton of a leaf is called a vein, 
and another portion a nerve, this apparently precise mode of 
speaking leads yet more strongly to the belief, that the struc- 
ture and function of those two parts are as widely different as 
the structure and function of a vein and a nerve in the animal 
economy ; else why should such nice caution be taken to dis- 
tinguish them ? But it must be confessed that there is no 
difference whatever, except in size, between the veins and 
nerves of a leaf. Let us, then, abandon a term which is one of 
those relics of a barbarous age which it is the duty of modern 
science to expel. 
My second objection applies to the vague manner in which 
