205 



son calls an " impassable barrier between s^arieties and species." If 

 this is not to be expected or attainable, then an arbitrary boundary 

 must be proposed, subject to the influences of observation and experi- 

 ment ; and this really renders it expedient that at one time a variety 

 should be named as a species, and at another a supposed species sub- 

 side into a variety, just as the evidence before an observer preponde- 

 rates one way or the other. If this be inconvenient to the systeraatist 

 or botanical statist, it must be submitted to, till it has been decidedly 

 shown what are the characters to distinguish species from variety in 

 every natural family. 



It is doubtless true, as remarlced by Fries, that small is the diffe- 

 rence that depends upon a hair, and yet a haii''s breadth may be a 

 sufficient line of demarcation between safety and destruction, and 

 therefore not quite to be despised. But until botanists have decided 

 what is absolutely essential to specific distinction, and what is not so, 

 in every family, we may be justified, I think, in attending to minute 

 characters, and noting them, until extended observation produces 

 conviction of truth or error. But is not the variety of Nature's pro- 

 ductions a source of the most ravishing delight, and the contemplation 

 and examination of her numerous vegetable forms a pursuit well wor- 

 thy of our attention, as giving rise to mental pleasure, and exercising 

 the perceptive faculties ? Our predecessors in the field, indeed, have 

 only left us in our own countiy the gleanings of the harvest ; but let 

 us not rest satisfied that they have done all that can be accomplished, 

 but carefully look out for ourselves. Some botanists appear displeas- 

 ed with Nature because she smiles at the rules of art, and hence they 

 would, if possible, fetter her within their own definitions. In their ca- 

 priciousness they will expand some genera agreeable to them with 

 well-turned species, but others must remain locked up with all their 

 inmates, and no liberty is to be allowed them. How many fresh delights 

 have opened upon me since I studied minutely the characters of the 

 Rubi, unchilled by the remark too often made on every hedge, that it 

 is only Rubus fi'uticosus that is there ! And as to the objection of an 

 herbarium's containing too many specimens of varieties or supposed 

 species, I am of opinion that it is only by the study of numerous sjje- 

 cimens that a fair judgment of the claims of any species can be arri- 

 ved at, and that it is injudicious to found a species upon a single 

 specimen only. 



I think also, that it is unfair to contend sweepingly that botanists 

 in general are guided in all they do by a " love of approbation " or no- 

 toriety-seeking. This is not my experience of my own botanical 

 Vol. II. 2 l 



