NATURE NOTES. 
214 
The rain is over, — the air is fresh, — the flowers are fragrant, 
— there is light in the sky, — all the world of Nature is glad 
and rejoices, — yet here is a living creature shut up with a 
book which surely God never had the making of ! and his face is 
wan, and his eyes are sad, and he seems not to know the 
meaning of joy ! ’ ” Never, surely, did birds talk before in 
so happy a combination of Ollendorff and eloquence. 
Well, perhaps we must not expect accuracy from a novelist ; 
but what are we to say when we find so careful and admirable 
a writer as Mrs. Meynell talking about “hawthorn pods”?* 
The word pod has a sufficiently definite meaning, but how does 
it apply to the fruit of the hawthorn, and why should it be so 
applied, when the word “ haws ” is so familiar ? In the same 
article, Mrs. Meynell enumerates among “ quite wild things, 
untilled at all, gathered together in districts acres large,” the 
“ osiers for the harvest of the basket-weaver.” Does she really 
think that osiers are “ quite wild things,” and that they need no 
cultivation ? The incapacities of farmers’ wives, as recorded 
by Mrs. Meynell, have already met with indignant disclaimers 
from representatives of the class attacked. Is it too much to 
hope that if this essay be gathered into her next slim volume, 
the gifted author may be induced to recognize that osiers do not 
grow wild, and to substitute “ haws” for “ hawthorn pods.” 
It must be confessed, however, that slips of this kind occur 
even in papers which might be supposed to be better informed. 
Thus the Gipsy Journal — the discontinuance of which we note 
with regret — lately referred, in its “ Gilbertian Guild” notes, to 
the “ catkins ” of the sycamore {Acer Pseudoplatanus). Now 
catkin is a term of perfectly definite application, and is confined 
not only by botanists, but in popular parlance, to a form of 
inflorescence common to certain trees, of which the sycamore 
is not one. Why, then, should the word be wrested from its 
proper meaning, and bestowed upon an inflorescence to which it 
cannot in any accurate sense apply ? 
Perhaps the hope is unreasonable, and yet we cannot help 
wishing that popular writers, be they novelists, essayists, or 
scientists, would take a little more trouble to be correct in 
details of this kind. They might, perhaps, write a little less, 
but what their readers lost in quantity they would gain in 
quality, while the authors themselves would obtain a repu- 
tation for accuracy which at present they can hardly claim to 
possess. 
Daily Chionicle, August 22. 
