184 Mr. P. R. Lowe on [ILis, 



moment would be to call them " geographical species." The 

 name is one which is accurately. descriptive, and it brings out 

 the fact that such specific variations have " ecpal rank" 

 with " species " — that they might be, in fact, regarded as 

 " species," even using that word in its nomenclatural and 

 systematic sense, and not suftspecies. For it may not be 

 needless to point out that we have no knowledge to guide us 

 to a conclusion as to whether, for example, the European 

 race of Great Crested Grebe was differentiated prior to the 

 differentiation of the African, or vice versa, or whether they 

 were differentiated simultaneously from a common type. 

 The solution perhaps lies rather in the probability that there 

 was an extension of range from one continent to the other 

 with subsequent differentiation in the new area occupied — 

 but this by the way. 



For, in passing on, there is another point which I should 

 like to dwell on, viz., that if there is any excuse whatever 

 for regarding subspecies as "incipient species" we must 

 surely confine such a term to the kind of " subspecies " which 

 I have been discussing, and by no manner of means to the 

 kind which Mr. Bonhote refers to as a " true or environ- 

 mental subspecies " ; for since in an ^' environmental sub- 

 species '^ it is only the soma which is affected, unless one 

 believes in the inheritance of acquired characters it is diffi- 

 cult, nay impossible, to conceive how such subspecies can 

 play an}- part in the generally accepted scheme of evolution. 

 But granting this as approximating very nearly to what is 

 almost universally held to be the truth, we arrive at the 

 consideration of our second group (viz. B. Environmental 

 subspecies), and find that it is mostly comprised of numbers 

 of trinomialised variations for which some such description 

 as the following might very well be taken as a standard : — 



" differs from typical examples in being of a 



distinctly darker shade of on the mantle and coverts, in 



being slightly paler below, and in having the wing and tail 

 measurements averaging — mm. longer or shorter," the 

 variation obviously being the direct result of a more humid, 

 more arid, more sunlit, more sunless, or more or less 

 adjectival locality. 



