The Uncertainty of Language

In attempting to trace out the history of any plant that has long been subjected to the dominion of man, we are beset with difficulties growing out of the uncertainty of language. And arising also from the absence of precise terms of science, in the descriptions or illusions which we meet respecting them. So in this investigation, we may easily be misled by meeting the word apple in the Bible and in the translations of Latin and Greek authors. We may be permitted to question whether the original words translated apple may not have been applied to quite different fruits. Or perhaps we may ask whether our word may not originally have had a more general sense, meaning as it does according to its derivation, any round body