THE USE AlfD ABUSE OF THE GENUS 197 



otlier words, has become useless, and we might just as well have a 

 mononomial. The veiy object tor which the generic name was 

 proposed has been lost. 



" To illustrate the point further, suppose that we subdivide an 

 old genus into three, and use three generic names where previously 

 we used but one, we emphasize, it is true, that there are differences 

 between these three groups, but by the very same act we obliterate 

 the fact, formerly indicated by the single generic name, that there 

 are resemblances which join these three groups together as compared 

 with other groups in the same family. One of these facts would 

 seem to be of quite as much importance as the other, and bv the 

 creation of the new genera we lose quite as much as we gain. We 

 should carefully guard against allowing our enthusiasm for the 

 discover}^ of differences to blind us to the fact that the real object of 

 systematic research is the discovery of true relationship. 



"Now the whole trouble in this matter — and a vital flaw, to my 

 mind, in our system of nomenclature — is that we try to make a 

 double use of our system with the result that it is gradually breaking 

 down from the impossible burden. A generic name as we use it 

 to-day is made to serve two purposes. It is (1) a term b}'^ which we 

 indicate to others what we are talking or writing about, and (2) a 

 term by which the systematist indicates what he regards as a recog- 

 nizable phylogenetic group. It is suicidal for any system of nomen- 

 clature that names for ' things ' should be constantly changed to fit 

 our ever changing ideas of their relationships. Surely there should 

 be some way of indicating the progress of our studies in the relation- 

 ships of birds, for instance, without rendering unintelligible to all 

 save a few specialists, the very names by which we refer to those 

 birds 



*'The main point would be to check the excessive generic sub- 

 division which is to-day rampant in certain quarters. If some such 

 reform be not inaugurated, technical nomenclature will soon be — if it 

 is not already — useless to anj^one but a narrow specialist. For 

 exami^le, the botanist has long known of the differences between the 

 so-called flowering dogwoods and those without involucral leaves ; but 

 what profit does he gain by changing the generic name of the former 

 to Conoxiflon \siG\ compared to the loss that he inflicts upon the 

 ornithologist, the entomologist, or the student of general scientific 

 interests, who know them under the name Cornus and who, unless 

 they be Greek scholars, have no conception of what sort of herb, 

 shrub or tree a Cynoxylon may be." 



Dr. Stone's suggestion is . " Why not adopt an arbitrary set of 

 genera de convenience \_sic\ so far as nomenclature is concerned and 

 use subgeneric terms when we desire to call attention to more refined 

 phylogenetic groups. At the present time we constantly make use 

 of ' group ' names in discussing the relationships of different sets of 

 species in a large genus without in any way interfering with the 

 nomenclature, and the practice could just as well be extended." 



We do not quite understand what is intended by "an arbitrary 

 set of genera." 



