22 GREENE 



American, and even here of somewhat restricted range. A similar 

 species, of distribution as limited and peculiar, belongs to southern 

 Europe, inhabiting the shores of the Adriatic Sea. Now between 

 these two kinds of Kosteletzkya occupying widely sundered conti- 

 nents, and neither one much more than local, each along its own little 

 line of seaboard — between these two Linnaeus apprehends the exist- 

 ence of a more intimate relationship than the most advanced evolu- 

 tionists of the twentieth century would be likely to affirm. He re- 

 marks a very close superficial likeness between them; so close that, 

 were that all, he would declare them to be specifically one and the 

 same; but, in the characters of their little seed pods or capsules they 

 are so unlike that on this account separate specific rank must be ac- 

 corded both, and so he places them; concluding, however, with this 

 thoroughly evolutionistic query: May not the Venetian species 

 have sprung from the Virginian?^ The more probable theory of 

 the evolutionist of our time would be, that both are descendants from 

 some common ancestor that had a more general distribution and is 

 now extinct. But, that Linnaeus was disposed to regard the Virgin- 

 ian species as having been created such as it is, and the Venetian as 

 having originated from that in after times, is enough to warrant our 

 regarding him as an evolutionist. 



I shall cite but one more instance of Linnaeus's tacit acceptance of 

 species as derived from other species through altered environment. 

 The case is that of the cultivated beet. The genus Beta, in his view, 

 consists of two species only, one the Beta maritima indigenous to Old 

 World seashores, a wild plant altogether, and never under cultivation, 

 and, in this wild condition not given to variation, but always one and 

 the same thing. The second species is Beta vulgaris, one not known 

 as a wild plant anywhere, but existing from immemorial ages in gar- 

 dens and fields as a cultivated plant, and that under many marked 

 varieties. Now the short and easy method of dealing with a genus 

 like this — a method many an indifferent systematist would follow — 

 would be to make the guess that, as only one wild species is known, 

 all the cultivated things of that genus are but so many varieties of 

 the one species. The whole tendency of Linnaius's mind was in this 

 direction, that is, of reducing both genera and species to a minimum. 



' Species Plantarum, 2 Ed., p. 981. 



