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.

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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