226 TUE NATUEAL HISTOEY EEVIEW. 



XXI. — Species and Subspecies. 



Diagnoses d'esp^ces noutelles ou meconnues, poue seetir 



DES MATEEIAUX A UNE ELOEE EEFOEMEE DE LA FeANCE, ET 



DES CONTEEES YoisiNEs Par Alexis Jordan. Paris, 186i. 



Twenty, or even ten years ago, the publication of a work such as 

 that which we now propose briefly to notice, would have attracted 

 little attention in the botanical world. By all botanists engaged on 

 a general survey of the vegetable kingdom, and therefore accustomed 

 to broad views of the nature of species, it would have been re- 

 garded as a mere puzzle. They would have felt that they had little 

 or nothing in common with an author whose opinions were so 

 different from their own. The school of local botanists, as it has 

 been called, of men who devoted themselves to the minute observa- 

 tion of a limited number of plants, inhabiting a confined area, was 

 becoming more and more separate from that of general botanists. 

 The views of the two schools on the nature and limitation of species, 

 were indeed utterly at variance, with little or no prospect of their 

 being reconciled. The general botanist, trying to grasp the whole 

 range of plant forms, and thus accustomed to deal with large 

 numbers, came to overlook or under-estimate the importance of 

 minute characters. From the very nature of his studies he had a 

 bias in favour of combination, rather than separation. The local 

 botanist had a smaller number of objects of study. He, there- 

 fore, looked at them more closely, and became familiar with points 

 of difference which escaped the other, but, at the same time, lost 

 sight of the points of resemblance, which at once caught the at- 

 tention of the general observer. Each of these two classes of 

 naturalists was right from his point of view, but each had some- 

 thing to learn from the other. 



Fortunately for the progress of science, the current of thought 

 on the question of species, has, within the last few years, received 

 an entirely new direction, and acquired new vitality, by the publica- 

 tion of the admirable speculations of Darwin and Wallace. 

 Whether we adopt or reject the Darwinian hypothesis, we must 

 equally appreciate the great mass of new and unexpected facts, 

 which its originators and supporters have brought forward in its 

 favour. It would be premature to say that it has put an end to 

 the difierences between the two classscs of observers, but there can be 



