NEW PUBLICATIONS. 27 
limits of species would be at his wits' end were he to examine and 
compare the two works quoted above. Both purport to be first instal- 
ments of complete British. Floras, that will contain descriptions and 
figures. of every species of our ‘native plants. . On comparing them, 
however, as far as they can be compared together, we find that the 
first eleven species of Mr. Bentham's book are represented by no less 
than twenty-three in Mr. Syme’s. The authors have evidently very dif- 
ferent opinions as to what is a species. ‘The man who would so define 
that which constitutes a species as to be clearly understood and uni- 
` versally received, would perform for botany a service second only to 
that of Linnæus when he invented his binominal nomenclature. But is 
it possible to give such a definition? The long-accepted opinion that 
species have an existence in nature may be an error, notwithstanding 
the many plausible reasons that are adduced in support of it. We 
may be obliged to accept the modern notion that a species is nothing 
more than a subjective realization of the systematist, whereby he unites 
under a single name 4 group of individuals which have certain charac- 
ters in common. But if he is governed in his grouping by any general 
principles, the expression of these would define his notion of a species. 
It is different, however, with the disciples of the modern school of de- 
velopment, whose least fault seems to be the upsetting of species as 
an objective or a subjective reality in natural history ; for if all the 
members of a species are in a condition of never-ceasing progression,— 
if everything is changing into something else,—then that definition 
which to-day made only the one species, may to-morrow, from the 
same materials, make many. Yet this change, if it exist, may be so 
slow as to be inappreciable to botanists, say, of an particular century, 
or even to the whole human race. e have observed that the relations 
of style to stamens in Primule gathered 220 years ago are the same as 
those of the present day, so that though they were then “ tending to- 
wards a dioicous condition,” and have. been ever since, nature has been 
unable to help on this transformation, even to the smallest extent, 
during that period. Nor has this subtle power been able, according to 
Dr. Heer, to making anything of Pinus Abies, L., during the long pe- 
riod that has intervened since its leaves, branches, and fruit were spread 
out in the clays of Bacton during the Upper Pliocene period, except the 
unchanged Pinus Abies, L. 
Darwinians, then, or not, it comes to the same thing, species, what- 
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