SPECIES AND SUBSPECIES. 239 



old Linnean D. verna, but to eacli of wliicli he gives a di«tlnct 

 specific name, all sense of proportion, when compared with the 

 other species of JDraba, is entirely lost with the disappearance of the 

 original name. Even if we refer them all to Eropliila, as a genus 

 or sub-genus, unless we regard that genus as monotypic we have no 

 clue to the relative value of the specific name. So long as the 

 section JBatrachium of the genus Banuncuhcs consisted of one 

 species, it was fairly comparable with i2, muricatus, but now that it 

 is sub-divided in Britain into twelve species, each of the sub-species 

 is to appearance commensurate with the whole of R. muricatus, 

 which in the British Flora is kept entire, whereas it is in fact only 

 comparable with one of several forms into which that common 

 European and Asiatic species may be analysed, and into which it is 

 in fact divided in Oriental Floras. 



To a certain extent Linneus had foreseen and provided for this 

 difficulty by sub-dividing his species when necessary into varieties, 

 marked by one of the letters of the Greek alphabet, and generally 

 also with a special Latin name. In this manner the relative import- 

 ance of the species and the variety was made manifest, the name of 

 the species being most prominent. The Linnean nomenclature is still 

 retained in theory, but it has been more or less abandoned in prac- 

 tice ; forms which he regarded as varieties, being now very frequently 

 regarded as species. 



There have not been wanting here and there naturalists who 

 have been sensible of the inconvenience of this state of things, and 

 who have attempted to provide a remedy. Mr. Hewett Watson, in 

 particular, in the course of his valuable investigations into the dis- 

 tribution of British plants, was of course a continual sufferer from 

 the present lax system of nomenclature, and has recorded in the 

 pages of his Cybele a vigorous protest against it. As is well known 

 he has proposed to recognise three classes of species, each repre- 

 senting a fundamentally different idea, viz : — aggregate species, true 

 species, and segregate species ; designating by the first those species 

 which are divisible into a certain number of types capable of 

 recognition and definition, and presumably capable of transmitting 

 their characters for[a limited number of generations to their offspring. 

 The third term, segregate or subspecies, he applies to the units of 

 which the aggregate species is made up. Modifying these definitions 

 a very little so as to regard the second or true species as equal in 

 rank with the first, except in so far that it has not yet been resolved 



