250 The Botanical Gazette. [September, 



hence the variable organs. I look upon this as one of the 

 most promising features of the work of future taxonomists of 

 the higher groups. 



The serious danger lurking just here is that when one set of 

 characters has proved serviceable in a number of specific or 

 generic limitations the tendency is to make the fabric of the 

 whole group conform to that one set. This gives, of course, 

 a kind of mathematical precision, and every problem is solved 

 by the same formula. But, unfortunately, nature never con- 

 forms to such arbitrary rules, and the resulting arrangement 

 may be as purely artificial as those that are confessedly so. 

 The character of a species is an extremely composite affair, 

 and it must stand or fall by the sum total of its peculiarities 

 and not by a single one. A specific character in one group 

 may be a generic character in a closely related one, or no char- 

 acter at all. Therefore, there is nothing that involves a 

 broader grasp of facts, the use of an inspiration rather than a 

 rule, than the proper discrimination of species. I have a be- 

 lief that the arbitrary, rule-of-three mind will never make a 

 successful taxonomist; and that there is a sort of instinct for 

 specific limitations which the possessor cannot communi- 

 cate to another. This taking into account the total character 

 of a plant, from fades to minute characters, will furnish the 

 basis of future descriptive work. The more obstacles that 

 can be put in the way of hasty determination the better. 



I have dwelt thus upon the work of collection and descrip- 

 tion, both to magnify it and to indicate that its proper posi- 

 tion is that of a preliminary phase in the studv of Systematic 

 Botany. 



II. The STUDY of ufe-historif.s.—A second phase of 



Systematic Botany may be called the study of life-histories. 

 It follows the former in natural as well as historical sequence, 

 and, curiously enough, its votaries do not usually class them- 

 selves with systematists, although their work is chiefly an at- 

 tempt to discover affinities. True, they deal in the main 

 with the larger groupings, but this is only possible when a 

 wealth of species is at hand. By "life-history" I do not 

 mean simply that gross observation which watches a plant 

 from germination to maturity, although that must be con- 

 sidered an extremely useful service; but even more that mi- 

 nute tracing, cell by cell, f rom the primitive cell to the 

 mature plant, a work which is now conceded to reveal more 



