81 MODERN TENDENCY TO COMBINE SPECIES. 
leaves, and a sort of lignescent receptacle, bearing achenioid ovaries, 
very hairy, and a perianth of 4 or 6 broad lobes; but we can make 
nothing of it, unless Dr. Seemann should have some materials. 
REMARKS ON THE MODERN TENDENCY TO COMBINE 
SPECIES. 
By H. F. Hanes, Pn.D,, erc. 
The extreme tendency shown by some.of the most illustrious and ex- 
perienced of modern botanists to combine closcly-allied species, is no 
doubt to be regarded as a practical protest against the views of such 
writers as MM. Boreau, Jordan, Schott, and, to some extent, Boissier. 
But as is usual in such cases, the reaction has been as excessive as the . 
evil which called it into existence; and, as I have elsewhere had occa- 
sion to remark, in many instances the reductions are evidently pro- 
posed on purely abstract grounds, or mere theoretical notions as to the 
possible extent of variation, and not from direct observation ; in other 
words, a given plant is assumed to be a form of some allied species, 
because, in the writer's judgment, that species ought to vary within 
certain limits. It is not difficult to adduce direct proof of such being 
the case. The Australian continent, from climate and physical con- 
figuration, appears pre-eminently to favour variation. After years’ 
close study of the vegetation of that vast territory, influenced doubtless 
by daily accumulating examples of the protean forms assumed by com- 
mon and well-known plants, the excellent and laborious Dr. F. Mueller; 
in his ‘Plants Indigenous to Victoria,’ combined various species of 
Boronia, Dodonea, and Tribulus. . Bentham, re-examining the 
species of these genera in his ‘Flora Australiensis,’ with the same 
materials used by Dr. Mueller, not only in many instances is at issue 
with that author, but even in some cases considers the reduced species 
more nearly to others than those to which they had been referred. At 
page 18 of the above work, Dr. Mueller unites without hesitation 
Hibbertia angustifolia and H. fasciculata; Mr. Bentham, after careful 
revision of the whole genus, not only keeps them apart, but places 
them in different subsections. Dr. J. D. Hooker, in his paper on the 
distribution of Arctic plants, reduces the American Viola blanda, 
s Willd., to F. Tee L., on which Professor Asa Gray observes (Am. 
