ZOE 



Vol. V. November, 1900-jANUARY, 1901. Nos. 6, 7, 8 



SOME SOURCES OF ERROR IN GENERA AND 



SPECIES. 



KATHARINE BRANDEGEE. 



Systematic botanists cannot be too often reminded that their 

 work is essentially preliminary, that genera and species do not 

 exist in nature, and that their object should be to supply, as soon 

 as possible, a classification in which the determination of plants 

 as to genera should be extremely easy. There would seem to be 

 no good reason why it should not be so simple that the average 

 child of ten could know the first name of most of the organisms 

 belonging to his environment. The beginnings of the natural 

 sciences, learned in the best way from Nature herself, are always 

 delightful, a constantly enlarging new world opens to the observ- 

 er, furnishing resources which diminish the temptation to less 

 innocent pleasures in times of idleness. The door to these joys 

 of Nature is difficult of opening because of the uncertainty of 

 names. Observation is constantly checked because the result 

 cannot be intelligently communicated. 



The tendency at present seems to be to define as a species every 

 organism which can, by any attribute however minute, be dis- 

 tinguished from its relatives. When by this process, which is 

 essentially the description of individuals, a number of "species" 

 have been accumulated, the next step is to "institute" a genus 

 which shall include the group, which genus in very many cases 

 is simply the ecpiivalent of the earlier single species. The genera 

 and species are in this manner made entirely inelastic, and the 



