ON THE NOMENCLATURE OF GARDEN PLANTS. 
127 
arises for tlie most part from the imperfection of the materials at 
his disposal. On the principle of recognising Hercules from his 
foot, or a lion by his claw, a botanist is too often expected to 
recognise some miserable scrap of a specimen, smashed it may be 
beyond hope of certain recognition in its transit through the 
post, and rendered unrecognisable by the stupid practice of enve¬ 
loping the “ specimen” in cotton wool. 
Should the temper of the botanist under these circumstances be 
sufficiently unruffled to enable him to give a coherent answer at 
all, it is, to say the least, not at all unlikely that the name he 
assigns to the bruised and maimed fragment is wrong—that the 
foot is not that of Hercules, the claw not that of a lion. 
Imperfect specimens then, often unavoidably imperfect, engender 
faulty nomenclature. 
Eut the specimen may be a good one, while the means 
of comparison and identification may be defective. Even 
the rich herbarium at Hew, admirably arranged as it is 
for purposes of research, is not, cannot be complete. The means 
and facilities at that establishment transcend those offered by any 
like institution at home or abroad, and the willing help and hearty 
co-operation there afforded to anyone engaged in serious research 
demand the most cordial and grateful acknowledgment. Still it 
is possible to take a good specimen to the Kew herbarium, to 
avail oneself of all the resources of that unrivalled establishment, 
to profit by the kindly aid of the staff, and yet to make mistakes— 
mistakes of identification sometimes arising from the fault or defect 
of the inquirer himself, or mistakes arising from the fact that a 
particular species, known to science, is not represented in the 
herbarium, or that a particular book in which that species is 
described or figured is wanting from the shelves of the library. Of 
mistaken identifications we say but little ; how they may arise is but 
too obvious. The only consolation is, that those wiser and more 
experienced than ourselves occasionally lapse into similar errors. 
Turning now to the horticulturist proper as a creator of 
confusion in nomenclature, it must be admitted that he is too 
often guilty, as Mrs. Malaprop would say, of a “ great derangement 
of epitaphs.” With little botanical knowledge he is necessarily 
unfamiliar with botanical usage, and so, if he ventures to act as 
sponsor, as he sometimes does, the result is not satisfactory. 
In the case of newly-imported plants the general practice—and it 
is one which cannot be too much commended—is to seek the assist- 
