THE SPECIES CONCEPTION. 



in which a certain pattern or patterns predominated, though 

 not to the entire exclusion of others. The same patterns may 

 be present though uncommon in colonies a few miles removed, 

 where other patterns take the leading role. Thus Gulick says 

 of the special pattern he called Apex tuberans, "the metro- 

 polis of this species is Kalaikoa ; it is also found in Ahonui, 

 and single specimens have been brought from Wahiawa and 

 Helemano. ' Any mutation having a recognizable pattern 

 (races of the third grade) could be treated as a "species' 

 by this method ; and in fact there are numerous unnamed 

 mutations neither more or less distinct than many of those 

 which have been named and denned. It is often a convenience 

 to have names for patterns in which the association of char- 

 acters is moderately stable. We may speak of the ernestina 

 pattern, the dunkeri pattern, etc., without committing our- 

 selves for or against the theory that these names stand for 

 races of systematic significance, or are in fact anything more 

 than character combinations which from their abundance 

 would seem to have a certain degree of cohesion. 



A philosophic method of dealing with intraspecific differ- 

 entiation is one of the greatest present needs of systematic 

 zoology. Systematists can 110 more deal with species and sub- 

 species as their ultimate units than physicists with molecules 

 or even atoms. It is senseless to oppose the facts which our 

 vaster collections and more critical methods are forcing upon 

 us. The terms species and subspecies, though elastic, have a cer- 

 tain status recognized by those accustomed to deal with these 

 matters, even though the categories may not be rigidly formu- 

 lated. To enlarge the species conception to cover every group 

 of individuals having a recognizable special character, as some 

 naturalists have recently advocated, would be to reduce the 

 whole subject to chaos. Some English naturalists give a 

 special name to every form having a special character, such 

 as albinism, xanthism, a special pattern, a particularity of 

 shape, or the like. This is one method, doubtless far better 

 than none, of making intelligible record of such matters. We 

 are not prepared to name every individual of polymorphic 

 species, but in reasonable limits it seems useful to have names 



