20 SPECIES NOT 



the modern system of species-making. A man, 

 often without any knowledge of comparative 

 anatomy, the only sound basis of classification, 

 will take a series of birds or insects from a 

 country of which he personally knows nothing. 

 He separates the former according to some con- 

 spectus, and then noting a white band here or 

 a black one there, or a difference in size, imme- 

 diately makes it into a species, invents for it a 

 name as long as its wing, founded doubtless upon 

 very correct Greek, puts his own name to it as 

 its discoverer, and sends it forth to the world 

 as a newly-determined species. A year or two 

 after a naturalist visiting the country finds that 

 after all the species was merely a local variety, 

 the effect of climate and food, which, if left 

 alone, would have gone back to its parent form 

 again. 



Now this is going on every day. To look 

 well these species must have tremendously long 

 Greek derivations to distinguish them. All the 

 old sensible expressive names employed by such 

 men as Temminck are tabooed as not being "up 

 to the state of science." This has been one 

 fruitful source of the present state of natural 

 history; all our species are in confusion, and of 

 course the circumstance is gladly laid hold of 

 by Mr. Darwin as corroborating his views. 



Be this as it may, a really good naturalist 

 will always detect the species in the variety. 

 How is this? Simply because the variety always 

 carries with it some character or other which 



