ON THE NOMENCLATURE OE CAREEN EL ANTS. 
131 
sports or bud-variations, open up other points which .we 
cannot consider now. Bat in passing we must earnestly pro¬ 
test against the practice of stringing a long array, jumble 
rather, of Latin or Greek adjectives, often irrespective of gram¬ 
matical propriety, cumbersome to speak, laborious and troublesome 
to write. Such names should find no place in the garden, scientific 
or otherwise; they should not encumber the pages of any catalogue 
nor any journal. Unfortunately once launched, the journals are 
obliged to use them, but we own for our own part to a feeling of 
repugnance when we are obliged to write such terms as Osmanthus 
Aquifolium variegatus nanus , Ilex Aquifolium myrtifolia aureo- 
marginata • or Ilex Aquifolium parvifolia conspicua argenteo-mar- 
ginata, and such like. Scientific nomenclature had become an 
intolerable burden when Linnaaus swept it all away and sub¬ 
stituted the simple binomial nomenclature, the surname and baptis¬ 
mal name, as it were, for the descriptions which, prior to his time, 
served the purpose of names. Would that some Linnceus would 
arise and make a clean sweep of the incongruous jumble of names 
given to varieties of Ivies, Hollies, Eerns, and many other plants. 
Ear be it from us to deny the right of these varieties to distinctive 
appellation. Eor garden purposes the varieties in question are 
quite as important, often more so, than the species itself, or what 
botanists agree to consider the species. For scientific purposes 
these variations are also all important. If there was a time when 
they were held in relatively light esteem by some botanists, that 
period vanished when Darwin published his “ Origin of Species.” 
Darwin taught the botanists the true value and significance of these 
heretofore little regarded forms, and taught the naturalists (as 
Peter was taught not to call any man common or unclean) that 
the most apparently insignificant of these varieties may perchance 
furnish a clue to some of the deeper mysteries of Creation. 
Lastly, there remains the question of the proper nomenclature 
for hybrid or crossed seedliugs artificially raised by the gardener 
himself, having, so far as we know, no counterpart in Nature— 
unless perchance moth or bee may unwittingly have done what 
the hybridiser with set purpose has effected. Here again, for 
strictly botanical purposes, the botanist has rules to follow, and 
which he obeys rather less well than other parts of the canon, but 
it will hardly be thought desirable to introduce into mere garden 
catalogues the phraseology which botanists have invented, not merely 
to denote the nature of these productions, but at the same time to in- 
