"We were victims of a small majority, obtained by imagination playing
upon flunkyism, and the first result was we were not allowed to sit down
to botany with males. Mind you, we might have gathered blackberries with
them in umbrageous woods from morn till dewy eve, and not a professor
shocked in the whole faculty; but we must not sit down with them to an
intellectual dinner of herbs, and listen, in their company, to the
pedantic terms and childish classifications of botany, in which kindred
properties are ignored. Only the male student must be told in public that
a fox-glove is _Digitalis purpurea_ in the improved nomenclature of
science, and crow-foot is _Ranunculus sceleratus,_ and the buck-bean is
_Menyanthis trifoliata,_ and mugwort is _Artemesia Judaica;_ that, having
lost the properties of hyssop known to Solomon, we regain our superiority
over that learned Hebrew by christening it _Gratiola officinalis._ The
sexes must not be taught in one room to discard such ugly and
inexpressive terms as snow-drop, meadow-sweet, heart's-ease, fever-few,
cowslip, etc., and learn to know the cowslip as _Primula veris_--by
class, _Pentandria monogynia;_ and the buttercup as _Ranunculus
acnis_--_Polyandria monogynia;_ the snow-drop as _Galanthus
nivalis_--_Hexandria monogynia;_ and the meadow-sweet as _Ulnaria;_ the
heart's ease as _Viola tricolor;_ and the daisy as _Bellis
perennis_--_Syngenesia superflua.
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