Before entering upon the consideration of them, we may take the opportunity, furnished by this long word _Droseraceæ_, of saying a little about the "hard names" so often charged upon botanical science. It is continually asked what need is there to call flowers by those excruciating Latin titles. Why cannot they have plain English names? Why must all our names be
Like the verbum Græcum, Spermagoraiolekitholakapolides, Words that should only be said upon holidays, When one has nothing else to do?
Many make it a ground of abstaining from the study of botany altogether, that the names are so hard to learn, as if every other science and species of knowledge, including history and geography, were not equally full of hard words. But look now at the simple truth of the matter. Very many of the common or "English" names of flowers are in reality their botanical or Latin ones, as fuchsia, laburnum, camellia, geranium, iris, verbena, rhododendron, so that it is not a question of language after all. To be consistent, these names should be left to the professional man, and "English" ones be manufactured in their place; it is clear, however, that they can quite easily be learned and spoken, Latin though they are, and if some can be mastered and found simple enough, of course others can. Besides, what would it advantage us to substitute really English names for them? Nothing would be gained except a synonym, by saying, as we might, "crimson-drop" instead of fuchsia, or "golden-rain" instead of laburnum; while very much would be lost in precision by using a name of obscure and uncertain origin, and upon which even one's own neighbours might not be agreed, instead of a term fixed by the great leaders in the science of botany, whose judgment all respect, and which is accepted by every nation of the civilised world. It is quite as necessary to call plants by determinate scientific names as to call a certain constellation Orion, and a certain island Spitzbergen. Botanists do not call plants by Latin names simply out of pedantry, or to make their science difficult, but for the sake of clearness and uniformity. None of the botanical names are so hard as it is fancied; the Lancashire botanists in humble life have no trouble with them; the real difficulty is in not caring anything about the objects they are applied to. We do not find those who make so much outcry about the Latin names particularly anxious to learn the English ones either. The English names are not thrown overboard by their Latin companions. All true botanists, so far from rejecting or despising English names, love them and continually use them, substituting the Latin synonyms only when scientific accuracy requires.