uman and childish faculties; or--for I can scarcely say I have yet any
tenure of it myself--to make the paths of approach to it more pleasant. In
fact, I only know, of it, the pleasant distant effects which it bears to
simple eyes; and some pretty mists and mysteries, which I invite my young
readers to pierce, as they may, for themselves,--my power of guiding them
being only for a little way.

Pretty mysteries, I say, as opposed to the vulgar and ugly mysteries of the
so-called science of botany,--exemplified sufficiently in this chosen page.
Respecting which, please observe farther;--Nobody--I can say this very
boldly--loves Latin more dearly than I; but, precisely because I do love it
(as well as for other reasons), I have always insisted that books, whether
scientific or not, ought to be written either in Latin, or English; and not
in a doggish mixture of the refuse of both.

Linnaeus wrote a noble book of universal Natural History in Latin. It is one
of the permanent classical treasures of the world. And if any scientific
man thinks his labors are worth the world's attention, let him, also, write
{5} what he has to say in Latin, finishedly and exquisitely, if it take him
a month to a page.[2]

But if--which, unless he be one chosen of millions, is assuredly the
fact--his lucubrations are only of local and temporary consequence, let him
write, as clearly as he can, in his native language.

This book, accordingly, I have written in English; (not, by the way, that I
_could_ have written it in anything else--so there are small thanks to me);
and one of its purposes is to interpret, for young English readers, the
necessary European Latin or Greek names of flowers, and to make them vivid
and vital to their understandings. But two great difficulties occur in
doing this. The first, that there are generally from three or four, up to
two dozen, Latin names current for every flower; and every new botanist
thinks his eminence only to be properly asserted by adding another.

The second, and a much more serious one, is of the Devil's own
contriving--(and remember I am always quite serious when I speak of the
Devil,)--namely, that the most current and authoritative names are apt to
be founded on some unclean or debasing association, so that to interpret
them is to defile the reader's mind. I will give no instance; too many will
at once occur to any {6} learned reader, and the unlearned I need not vex
with so much as one: but, i