The apologists for the "common" or "popular" names of plants, as against scientific designations, can take comfort from the following :

Between "the language of flowers," as understood by the young people, and the terminology of the florist or scientific botanist there is a world-wide difference. It may be that "the rose by any other name would smell as sweet," but most people prefer the homely names of flowers to the incredible jargons in which scientific horticulturists revel. At the Royal Horticultural Society the chairman of the scientific committee exhibited drawings and specimens of the flower of a perfectly new plant, a "bigener," a sort of hybrid between two such dissimilar parents as the raspberry and the strawberry. Of this strange addition to the vegetable world, we are told that " it is generally considered to be Rubrus Leesii Bab." We do not dispute this statement, but when we are further told that" pedicel and sepals are finely setose, that it wants the epicalyx of the strawberry, and, moreover, that the carpels are not glabrous, " we are lost in admiration of the copiousness of the English language. Of another remarkable hybrid, a cross between the black currant and the gooseberry, which was shown at the same meeting, we are told that " the foliage resembles that of the gooseberry," rather than of the other parent plant, which is clear enough ; but what are we to understand when, in further description, we are informed that "the infloresence is a many-flowered raceme," "the sepal lobes erect, the stamens contabescent, and the 'style' villous ? " But there are profounder depths yet in these technical descriptions than any we have quoted.

Two botanists, the other day, were growing warm over an argument in reference to "the septicidal dehisence of a pericarp between the laminae of the dissepiment." Here, in sadness be it said, we feel compelled to draw the line. The "style" is "villous," or, as we should prefer to call it, villainous. - Evening Standard (London).