PREFACE. 
IX 
plants: and there have not been wanting authors who have 
even written works upon gardening, or the materia medica, 
arranged on the Linneean system.* This undue extension 
of the sexual method is contrary even to the declared 
opinion of Linnaeus himself, who expressly says, he con- 
sidered it only as a temporary substitute until the natural 
method, or that which considers the mutual affinities of 
plants, be so far improved as to admit of a clue being ap- 
plied to it, by which the student may investigate the place 
of a plant in the method without any other help. 
* Thus the Linnasan botanists committed the same error as the gram- 
marians and the philologers have frequently done in the composition of 
dictionaries, vocabularies, and etymologicons, from not considering the 
different uses of the various methods. Some interpreting dictionaries are 
arranged by roots, as those of Scapula, Mair, Salmon, and for most of the 
Oriental languages, to the great hindrance of the young student ; while, 
on the other hand, Gesner, Johnson, the Della Crusca, and the French 
Academy, have given us critical dictionaries, in the alphabetical order of 
the words, and have thus deprived themselves of the great help they might 
have deduced from the method of the roots, or the vocabulary form. 
If these authors had reflected upon the subject, instead of blindly follow- 
ing the track of some preceding author, who had perhaps a different object 
in view, they would certainly have discovered that, for interpreting an 
unknown language into a known, the alphabetic order either of the initial 
or terminal letters was indeed the most proper, because the letters of the 
word are, by hypothesis, the only guide. Whether the initial letters, as 
used in most clises, or the terminal, as adopted in the Coptic dictionaries, 
be the most proper, may admit of some dispute, the latter has the advantage 
of exhibiting the sense attached to the various terminations more clearly 
than the former. When the words of a known language are used to find 
the corresponding words in one that is unknown, the vocabulary form has 
the advantage of bringing together all those words that would denote nearly 
similar ideas. Whether this form, or the alphabetic order be adopted, this 
is the proper part of a double interpreting dictionary, to produce examples 
from the classic writers in the less known tongue, as authority for the use 
of those words; and not, as was absurdly done by Ainsworth, in the 
unknown — known part, since, in reading a foreign work, the context 
will enable the reader to choose the proper signification if the word be 
ambiguous; whereas, in writing a foreign language, we have occasion for 
examples to guide us in our choice of nearly synonymous words. The 
utility of the method of roots, for a critical dictionary, and the difficulty of 
using one on this plan for interpretation, is surely self-evident. 
