return I asked where they had all been put; and I was told that some of them were in the greenhouse, others were in various parts of the garden, and the Camels and Dromedaries were out in the orchards.
An old gardener once gave me his opinion that a laundry was better than a garden, “as garments had not got such mazin’ names as plants.” And the maze grows more intricate, when Berberis Darwinii is Barbarous Darwin, and Nicotiana is Nicodemus, and Irises are Irish, and they English Irish be braver than they Spanish Irish.
There was an old lady here who always said:—“If there be a flower that I do like, it be a Pertunium.” It was neither a petunia nor a geranium; but I never found out exactly what it was. Botanists might adopt the name, when they want one for a novelty, for it is better than most of theirs. It may be convenient to give things Greek or Latin names, and it certainly sounds better to say Archæopteryx and Deinotherium than Old Bird and Awful Beast. But it is absurd to take the ancient name for one thing, and give it to another; yet that is what Linnæus and his followers have very often done.
Besides their botanical names, many things have trade names now. There is a plant here of the sort that is described at Kew as Rhododendrum Ponticum Cheiranthifolium. But, when I wanted to get another like it, I found the nurseryman did not know it by that name. He called it Jeremiah J. Colman.
Even in plain English there are pitfalls. At a hotel in Penzance I found the coffee-room quite full, when I came in to breakfast, and I asked the head-waiter if he couldn’t find me a place. He answered:—“Very sorry, sir, only whiting and soles to-day.”
One morning in London I was eating potted tunny-fish at breakfast, and I soon felt that it was having an effect on me. My brain was clearer than it has ever been before or since. I understood things that had always puzzled me; and nothing was obscure. In fact, for about two hours I was a Man of Genius; and then I dropped down to my usual level.
I made many inquiries about it afterwards, but without result until I came upon a man who had spent a couple of years at the Laboratory of Marine Zoology at Naples. He had himself felt odd after eating tunny-fish one day, and he knew of other cases. In his own case there was increased blood-pressure, especially in the brain, such as might arise from eating putrid meat. But he thought his fish was sound, and ascribed the effect to some unknown substance in a tunny.
This tempts me to suggest a problem. The ancient Greeks were the cleverest people ever known, and they were always eating pickled tunny. Were they quite so clever before they reached the Mediterranean, and got this particular food?—Common trout were put into some of the New Zealand streams, and they became great fish, quite unlike their ancestors. Did something of the same sort happen to the ancient Greeks, in intellect though not in body?
There is no denying the cleverness of the ancient Greeks; but I am sceptical about their beauty. They would never have talked so much of beauty, unless it had been rare. When people now-a-days go talking of the beauty of Greek Gods, they are thinking of the works of Pheidias and his successors. There is much charm in works of earlier date; but nobody can say quite honestly that the people in them are good-looking, much less that they are beautiful. Yet the nation cannot suddenly have changed its looks. I think it was that artists were getting more fastidious in their choice of models.