PROBLEMS OF MODERN SCIENCE 



importance of which is equal to that of any other 

 department of Biology. 



Another thing that is essential for the develop- 

 ment of Systematic Zoology and Botany is inter- 

 national co-operation. We have this to a certain 

 extent already, but I should like to see something 

 much more thoroughgoing. I should like to see 

 an international organisation for the systematic 

 enumeration and description of the fauna and 

 flora of the entire globe something like the 

 international organisation which is now en- 

 gaged in cataloguing and charting the stars, but 

 I fear the different species of plants and animals 

 might prove to be, if not as numerous as the 

 individual stars, vastly more difficult to describe 

 and arrange. 



For much more eath to tell the starres on hy, 

 Albe they endlesse seeme in estimation, 



Then to recount the seas posterity : 



So fertile be the flouds in generation, 

 So huge their numbers, and so numberlesse their 

 nation. 



It is strange indeed that an Elizabethan poet 

 should have expressed so clearly the difficulties of 

 the systematic zoologist of to-day, for we may 

 suppose that Spenser was thinking not merely of 

 individuals, but also of kinds, or tribes ; what now, 

 for want of a better name, we call ' species.' How 

 these species should be defined, and how they have 

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