into oblivion. It savours of malignity to make his crown a crown of thorns, and if the application be unjust, it is truly diabolical.
Before I conclude the subject of nomenclature, I beg leave to offer a few reflections on changes of established names. It is generally agreed among mankind that names of countries, places, or things, sanctioned by general use, should be sacred; and the study of natural history is, from the multitude of objects with which it is conversant, necessarily so encumbered with names, that students require every possible assistance to facilitate the attainment of those names, and have a just right to complain of every needless impediment. The grateful Hollanders named the island of Mauritius after the hero who had established their liberty and prosperity; and it ill became the French, at that period dead to such feelings, to change it, when in their power, to Isle de France, by which we have in some late botanical works the barbarous Latin of Insula Franciæ. Nor is it allowable to alter such names, even for the better. Americo Vespucci had no very great pretensions to give his own name to a
