62 'WHAT IS A SPECIES?' 



4. Filially there Is geoij^raphical distribution, of the 

 utmost importance in the modification and origin of 

 s[)ecies and sub-species. bOrms found toi^^ether in cer- 

 tain L(eogra[)hical areas may be called Syvipalric (o-iV, 

 together ; -ndjpa, native countr)). The occurrence of 

 forms together may be termed Syvif^airy, and the dis- 

 continuous distribution of forms Asyuipatry. 



M)' friend, Professor E. Ra\' Lankester, to whom I owe 

 so much, in this as in many other -subjects, is inclined to 

 think that we should discard the word species not merely 

 momentarily but altogether. Modern zoology having 

 abandoned Linnaeus's conception of ' s})ecies ' should, 

 he considers, abandon the use of the word. In his 

 opinion the * origin ' of species was really the abolition 

 of species, and zoologists should now be content to 

 describe, name, draw, and catalogue forms. Further- 

 more, the various groups of forms briefly defined above 

 should be separately and distinctly treated by the zoolo- 

 gist, without confusion or inference from one to the 

 other. The systematist should say, ' I describe and name 

 certain forms a, b, cn:c. ' ; and then he or another may 

 write a sejjarate chapter, as it were : — * I now show that 

 the forms ab, ac, ad (form names) are syngamic': at 

 another time he may give reason for regarding any 

 of them as related by Epigony. 



I fear that this suggestion is a ' counsel of perfection ', 

 impossible of attainment, although there would be many 

 and great advantages in thus making a fresh start and 

 in the abandonment of 'species', or rather the re- 

 striction of the word to the only meaning it originally 

 possessed before it was borrowed from logic to become 

 a technical term in zoolog).^ If the main contention of 

 this Address be accepted, that a species is a syngamic and 

 synepigonic group of individuals, — an objective reality 

 however difficult to establish in practice, — we have an 

 additional powerful reason for the permanent use of the 

 word. 



mination is made -u throughout for the sake of convenience, although 

 Sympatriok or Sympairid would have been more correct. 

 ^ See F. A. Dixey in Nature ^ June 19, 1902, p. 169. 



