58 THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 



manuals of the plants of the northeastern United States, for 

 example, contains large additions: These acquisitions are in 

 some part the result of new introductions, running wild ; in an 

 important part, the discovery of species hitherto overlooked; 

 in large part, also, the results of redefinition, known as the 

 "splitting" of species. 



This splitting is not alone the result of a desire to "make 

 new species," but is the operation of a new psychology. In 

 everything we are rapidly becoming particularists. In the 

 time of Gray we studied plants as aggregates, trying to 

 make them match something else ; now we study them as segre- 

 gates, trying to make them differ from everything else. This 

 diversity in process accounts for the extension of Oenothera, 

 Carex, Rubus, Malus and Crataegus. Whatever may be said 

 of the relative ranks of the newly described species, we should 

 thereby nevertheless understand the forms better than hereto- 

 fore and refine both our discrimination and our definition. 

 Probably we do not yet really understand any one of the more 

 representative genera of plants of the northeastern United 

 States. 



In making these remarks I am not commending the prac- 

 tice of those who would divide and redivide minutely and who 

 would carry descriptive botany to such a point of refinement 

 that only the close specialists can know the forms. Under such 

 circumstances, systematic work defeats its own ends. — From an 

 . Irticle by L. H. Bailey in Science. 



