User:Pagliaccious

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This user has been on Wikipedia for 9 years, 7 months and 12 days. Pagliaccious likes to turn Wikipedia Green. This user is a participant in WikiProject Plants. This user is a participant in the Religion in Russia task force.

AGUAXIMA, (Hist. nat. bot.) plant of Brazil and the islands of South America.

This is all that is told to us about it; and I would ask for whom such descriptions are made. It cannot be for the natives of the country, who probably know more characteristics of the aguaxima than this description contains, and who do not need to learn that the aguaxima occurs in their country. It is as if one were to say to a Frenchman that the pear tree is a tree which grows in France, in Germany, &c. It is not for us either; for what does it matter to us that there is in Brazil a tree called aguaxima, if we know only this name? What use is this name? It leaves the ignorant as they were; it does not teach anything to others: if I therefore happen to describe this plant and several others, all poorly characterized, it is out of condescension towards certain readers who prefer to find nothing in a Dictionary article, or even to find only stupidity there, than not to find the article at all.

— Diderot, L’Encyclopédie