“This small majority was gained by a characteristic maneuver. The queen's name was gravely dragged in as disapproving the proposal, when, in fact, it could never have been submitted to her, or her comment, if any, must have been in writing; and as to the general question, she has never said a public word against medical women. She has too much sense not to ask herself how can any woman be fit to be a queen, with powers of life and death, if no woman is fit to be so small a thing, by comparison, as a physician or a surgeon. “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.”_ “Well,” said Vizard, “I think the individual names can only hurt the jaws and other organs of speech. But the classification! Is the mild luster of science to be cast over the natural disposition of young women toward _Polyandria monogynia?_ Is trigamy to be identified in their sweet souls with floral innocence, and their victims sitting by?” “Such classifications are puerile and fanciful,” said Miss Gale; “but, for that very reason, they don't infect _animals_ with trigamy. Novels are much more likely to do that.” “Especially ladies' novels,” suggested Vizard, meekly.