There is a Botanic Garden at Bhagulpore, which owes its origin to Major
Napleton. I have been unable to obtain any information regarding its
present condition. A good Botanic Garden has been already established in
the Punjab, where there is also an Agricultural and Horticultural
Society.
I regret that it should have been deemed necessary to make stupid
pedants of Hindu malees by providing them with a classical nomenclature
for plants. Hindostanee names would have answered the purpose just as
well. The natives make a sad mess of our simplest English names, but
their Greek must be Greek indeed! A _Quarterly Reviewer_ observes that
Miss Mitford has found it difficult to make the maurandias and
alstraemerias and eschxholtzias--the commonest flowers of our modern
garden--look passable even in prose. But what are these, he asks, to the
pollopostemonopetalae and eleutheroromacrostemones of Wachendorf, with
such daily additions as the native name of iztactepotzacuxochitl
icohueyo, or the more classical ponderosity of Erisymum Peroffskyanum.
--like the verbum Graecum
Spermagoraiolekitholakanopolides,
Words that should only be said upon holidays,
When one has nothing else to do.
If these names are unpronounceable even by Europeans, what would the
poor Hindu malee make of them? The pedantry of some of our scientific
Botanists is something marvellous.
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