I intend, therefore,—and believe that the practice will be found both wise and convenient,—to separate in all my works on natural history the terms used for vegetable products from those used for animal or mineral ones, whatever may be their chemical identity, or resemblance in aspect. I do not mean to talk of fat in seeds, nor of flour in eggs, nor of milk in rocks. Pace my prelatical friends, I mean to use the word 'Alb' for vegetable albumen; and although I cannot without pedantry avoid
using sometimes the word 'milky' of the white juices of plants, I must beg the reader to remain unaffected in his conviction that there is a vital difference between liquids that coagulate into butter, or congeal into India-rubber. Oil, when used simply, will always mean a vegetable product: and when I have occasion to speak of petroleum, tallow, or blubber, I shall generally call these substances by their right names.
There are also a certain number of vegetable materials more or less prepared, secreted, or digested for us by animals, such as wax, honey, silk, and cochineal. The properties of these require more complex definitions, but they have all very intelligible and well-established names. 'Tea' must be a general term for an extract of any plant in boiling water: though when standing alone the word will take its accepted Chinese meaning: and essence, the general term for the condensed dew of a vegetable vapour, which is with grace and fitness called the 'being' of a plant, because its properties are almost always characteristic of the species; and it is not, like leaf tissue or wood fibre, approximately the same material in different shapes; but a separate element in each family of flowers, of a mysterious, delightful, or dangerous influence, logically inexplicable, chemically inconstructible, and wholly, in dignity of nature, above all modes and faculties of form.
INDEX II.
TO THE PLANTS SPOKEN OF IN THIS VOLUME, UNDER THEIR ENGLISH NAMES, ACCEPTED BY PROSERPINA.
Apple, [102]
Aspen, [134]