BOOK III. 
GLOSSOLOGY. 
371 
lected under each organ all the terms which could by 
possibility be applied to it, and have repeated them over and 
over again without regard to previous definitions ; as if they 
supposed it impossible to convey by words an idea of the 
meaning of any term whatever, without noticing at length 
every possible application of it. Thus, in Willdenow's Prin- 
ciples of Botany, the most common and simple terms are 
repeated five, six, and even seven times ; and in a more modern 
work, of very high character {Les JElemens de Physiologic 
Vegetale et de Botanique, by Mirbel), the same practice has 
been carrried so far, that the application of the word simple is 
explained in twenty-three different instances. 
The true principles of arranging the glossology of science 
have, however, been long before the public. In the year 
1797, Link, in his Prodromus PhilosophicB Botanicce, distin- 
guished the characteristic or common terms used in Botany 
from those which applied only to particular organs ; and his 
example was afterwards followed by Illiger, a learned Ger- 
man naturalist, who, in the year 1810, proposed a total refor- 
mation of the method of describing the terms employed 
in Natural History (see his Versuch einer Systematischen 
vollstdndigen Terminologiefur das Thierreich und Pflanzenreich). 
Little attention, however, was paid to the principles of these 
writers till the year 1813 ; when De CandoUe adopted them 
in his Theorie Elementaire de la Botanique, with his accustomed 
skill and sagacity. 
The characteristic terms of botany are those which have a 
general application to any or all the parts of plants, and must 
not be confounded with such as have a particular application 
only, which will be found under the organs to which they re- 
spectively belong : the former are either individual or collective; 
of which the first apply to plants, or parts of plants, con- 
sidered abstractedly ; the second to plants, or their parts, 
considered in masses. To these are to be added those 
syllables and marks which, either prefixed or affixed to a 
known term, occasion an alteration in its signification. These 
I call terms of qualification. In the following arrangement, 
those terms which are seldom used are marked with a f ; and 
B B 2 
