FEB 2- 1909 
Volume 4 No. 8 
MUHLENBERGIA 
LIBRARY 
A. A. HELLER, Editor NEW YORK 
5 of ABS pee eae BOTANICAL 
RENO, NEVADA, JANUARY 27, 1909 GARDEN. 
FASPECTS OF THE SPECIES QUESTION” 
(Concluded ) 
By A. A. HELLER 
Continuing his remarks, Professor Clements says that “a 
form or a variation is just as important” to the ecologist as a 
species, and that therefore he must “be partly in sympathy 
with the present tendency of descriptive botany to search out 
-and describe all groups that are different, regardless of the de- 
gree of difference.” But he-believes that the proper way is to 
name varieties, or, in other words, that we must make use of 
trinomials. He thinks that by so doing we obtain “accuracy 
and clearness.” 
Under “Bases for Distinguishing Species,” it is pointed out 
that the degree of morphologic difference has been the basis, or 
the “principle that reproductive characters are of greater worth 
than vegetative ones. With this the ecologist is in full accord 
theoretically, but he would wish to have experimental evidence 
before accepting itas universally true. . . It must constantly 
be borne in mind, especially by those who believe that evolu- 
tion is always a question of the germ-plasm, that vegetative 
features alone are present in the blue-green algae and many of 
the fungi.” The great fault is the dependence upon a few her- 
barium specimens instead “‘of a large number of field individu- 
als,” and the lack of ‘‘as complete a series as possible of diver- 
gent individuals.” 
(101) 
