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th kinds: but in the study of plants, we must primarily separate our notion of their gifts to men into the three elements, flour, oil, and wine; and have instantly and always intelligible names for them in Latin, French, and English. And I think it best not to confuse our ideas of pure vegetable substance with the possible process of fermentation:--so that rather than 'wine,' for a constant specific term, I will take 'Nectar,'--this term more rightly including the juices of the peach, nectarine, and plum, as well as those of the grape, currant, and apple. Our three separate substances will then be easily named in all three languages: Farina. Oleum. Nectar. Farine. Huile. Nectare. Flour. Oil. Nectar. {230} There is this farther advantage in keeping the third common term, that it leaves us the words Succus, Jus, Juice, for other liquid products of plants, watery, milky, sugary, or resinous,--often indeed important to man, but often also without either agreeable flavor or nutritious power; and it is therefore to be observed with care that we may use the word 'juice,' of a liquid produced by any part of a plant, but 'nectar,' only of the juices produced in its fruit. 6. But the good and pleasure of fruit is not in the juice only;--in some kinds, and those not the least valuable, (as the date,) it is not in the juice at all. We still stand absolutely in want of a word to express the more or less firm _substance_ of fruit, as distinguished from all other products of a plant. And with the usual ill-luck,--(I advisedly think of it as demoniacal misfortune)--of botanical science, no other name has been yet used for such substance than the entirely false and ugly one of 'Flesh,'--Fr., 'Chair,' with its still more painful derivation 'Charnu,' and in England the monstrous scientific term, 'Sarco-carp.' But, under the housewifery of Proserpina, since we are to call the juice of fruit, Nectar, its substance will be as naturally and easily called Ambrosia; and I have no doubt that this, with the other names defined in this chapter, will not only be found practically more convenient than the phrases in common use, but will more securely fix in the student's mind a true conception of {231} the essential differences in substance, which, ultimately, depend wholly on their pleasantness to human perception, and offices for human good; and not at all
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