SPECIES AND VARIETIES. 203 



under name and record, but it is essential for keeping the full 

 assortment intact. If seeds of all the different species were 

 mixed and sown and harvested promiscuously, not every spe- 

 cies would happen to be represented in the quantity of seed 

 saved from the harvest, which would be enough to grow an 

 equally big field next year. 



The point we want to emphasize is, that, whereas in wheat 

 there are an enormous number of real, concrete species, there 

 exists an abstraction, the combination of such species, wheat, 

 Triticum vulgare, which has its own total potential variability 

 and tends to reduce this automatically. 



In the matter of nomenclature, if we want to use the name 

 Triticum vulgare for wheat, we cannot use such names as Tri- 

 ticum miracle or Triticum red fife for the species, they are not 

 of the same class, and certainly not of the same order as Tri- 

 ticum repens. The logical terminology here is a trinominal sys- 

 tem. Triticum vulgare can be used as the name of the whole 

 group and the component species can be properly called Tri- 

 ticum vulgare miracle and Triticum vulgare squarehead. If we 

 only remember that such things as Triticum vulgare are not 

 species but combinations of species, no harm is done. The differ- 

 ent wheats are certainly not varieties of Triticum vulgare. 



A trinominal system may look cumbersome at first sight, but 

 it makes it easier to denominate very many closely related real 

 species. To conclude, we would once more state it to be our 

 opinion that there is a fundamental difference between vari- 

 eties and species, and that only under rare, peculiar circumstan- 

 ces, but which are often realized under cultivation, can 

 varieties become species. 



