"That's a great deal to make one word mean," Alice said in a thoughtful tone. "When I make a word do a lot of work like that," said Humpty Dumpty, "I always pay it extra."

Sunday, 14 December 2008

Hortus siccus

From the Latin meaning dry (or dried) garden - a collection of specimens of plants, dried and preserved, and arranged systematically; an herbarium.

He has also taken to collecting a hortus siccus, and through the interest of his father was once mentioned in the Saturday Magazine as having been the first to find a plant, whose name I have forgotten, in the neighbourhood of Battersby. This number of the Saturday Magazine has been bound in red morocco and is kept upon the drawing-room table.” Samuel Butler – “The Way of All Flesh”

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