64 Writings of Edivard L. Greene. [zoe 



possible, both as to character and station, and leave to others the 

 unhappy task of finding out whether it is admissible or not. It 

 is a well-known fact that genera and species can be launched 

 with great ease, and that the process of disproxnng them is 

 onerous and thankless, the more so as the distant investi- 

 gator naturally defers somewhat to the one who is supposed to 

 have intimate knowledge of the living organism, and possibly to 

 find differences which are masked in the dead one. 



Mr. Greene has described "as new" about 700 species, and 

 resurrected something like the same number of groundless syno-- 

 nyms, nearly all relating to the Californian flora, and thus 

 adding to our already inflated list at least 1000 names. It is 

 safe to say that not more than one in ten of these species is 

 tenable, and probably one in fifteen or twenty would be nearer 

 the mark. 



In his earlier work, when he submitted his proposed species to 

 the judgment of Dr. Gray or Dr. Watson, the proportion was 

 much better, though the lapse of time and increasing knowledge 

 of connecting forms is dealing hardly with many of those, and 

 he has not escaped the suspicion of deliberately selecting the 

 extremes and ignoring the intermediates. 



The underlying reasons of Mr. Greene's devotion to "new 

 species" are not far to seek. The most important one is his 

 attitude concerning their origin. He openly contemns, as incon- 

 sistent with the Mosaic record, the theory of evolution held in 

 greater or less degree by almost all biologists, and proclaims his 

 belief in the special creation and the fixity of species, taking 

 occasional opportunity* to sneer at the misguided mortals who 

 differ from him. How this belief affects his botanical teachings 

 is evident at once. Rejecting the clue which would lead him 

 through the tangled labyrinth of overlapping forms which so 

 especially abound in the extreme variation of environment found 

 on the western coast of North America, nothing is consistently 

 left to him but to make a new species of every variation, no 

 matter how trivial. That he has not made five times as many is 



* ' ' And if so is it another of that class of facts which our friends the 

 evohitionists press into service, as indicating that species, and even genera, 

 are created by soil, cHmate, or in one oft-repeated word, environment?" 



