are carefully investigated—and it must constantly be 
borne in mind that there can be no wi/d hemp except in 
areas where it is native. The most critical studies on 
cultivated or weedy types of Cannabis—in Europe, 
North America and South America, for example—can 
vield little new evidence towards an understanding of 
the species composition of the genus. There have been 
enough examples of cultivated plants the classification 
of which has been clarified as a result of an investigation 
of wild ancestral types, of wild populations or of related 
wild species to indicate the desirability and necessity of 
this approach in the case of Cannabis, 
Il 
Although the taxonomic literature on Cannabis is com- 
plicated by a confusing plethora of specific and varietal 
names (most of which have never been properly published 
or described, according to the rules of botanical nomen- 
clature), the genus has been and still is generally con- 
sidered to be monotypic. 
We are persuaded that this opinion is the result of an 
almost total lack of taxonomic investigation of wild Can- 
nabis as it occurs in its natural habitat or even of com- 
prehensive and comparative studies of the range of 
variation found in cultivated hemp. Since botanists have 
not carried out such detailed and critical taxonomic 
studies, it has naturally been customary for authors of 
text-books, check-lists, floras, manuals, botanical diction- 
aries, pharmaceutical publications, agricultural treatises 
and other generalized and summary-type publications to 
repeat the orthodox monotypic concept, thus establish- 
ing it even more firmly in the literature. This establish- 
ment of the monotypic concept is reflected in modern 
chemical publications and even in the drafting of laws in 
some of the countries that control the use of Cannabis. 
A polytypic concept of the genus is not new. It goes 
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