ENGLISH NAMES IN BOTANY 395 
dispense with the word Banunculaceous than with ])erigy7ious 
if they are going to progress in Botany, but if they are going 
to learn only a little, they had better take the English generic 
name and add ' Family of ' to it. It appears to me essential 
that you should not throw a word or termination away.^ 
[February 1855.] I have gone over the accompanying 
very carefully, but fear it will hardly answer the purpose. 
It appears to me (but I may very well be wrong) far too 
laboured; too much is attempted to be taught by each 
sentence, they are hence too long and involved ; there is 
a constant wandering from particulars to general Laws ; and 
a great many too many words just a httle too difficult for 
beginners. To be so philosophical it should be in aphorisms, 
for you cannot be clear, concise, and learned too, in a con- 
versational form. My own impression is, that it would be 
better to make the demonstration of the Bean first, simple, 
clear and to the point, giving no words except the simplest. 
I object to ' axis,' ' relative,' ' modification,' etc., when super- 
added to the necessary and unavoidable technicalities ; each 
of these, though familiar to us, being a subject of thought, 
to the ' village school,' before understood. 
Having demonstrated the Bean, etc., you might then go 
over it again and another dissimilar plant along with it, and 
explain how the buds form, and the leaf buds give place to 
flower buds and how the leaves become floral whorls, how 
simple leaves become compound, how petals unite, etc., etc., 
but I am sure no pupil can learn all these things at once. 
You are so much accustomed to teach with specimens 
and pictures, illustrating every point and making everything 
clear, that you perhaps forget how much of these advantages 
you lose in a book ; and how necessary it is to be extreniely 
simple in diction and in separating your kinds of information. 
In short I doubt if you wiU succeed in teaching the uninitiated 
young structure and morphology at once, which you here 
attempt. I further doubt your Jbehag able to do a book of 
this kind piecemeal. It is a most difficult task the writmg 
down to the capacity of ignorance. I know it by experi- 
ence ; you must weigh every word and prune and clip every 
1 This is a rooted objection, repeated emphatically in a letter to Harvey, 
July 1858: 'I hate the whole system of English names. Why is not 
Myosotis and Epilobinm better than Mouse-ear (of which there are two), or 
Willow Herb, to which there is as good an objection ? ' 
