76 LINN&US AS AN EVOLUTIONIST 



one's successfully claiming him for the camp 

 of the evolutionists. 



There remains one other category of plant 

 forms, of lower rank than species, recognized 

 by Linnaeus, that of varieties. Unless I err, 

 he claimed that he had been the first of 

 systematists to recognize varieties and to 

 teach the distinctions between variety and 

 species. Will he so define variety as to leave 

 an opening for the possible development of 

 a species out of that which started forth at 

 first as a mere variety? If we use our own 

 reason, and credit Linnaeus with not momen- 

 tarily forgetting to use his, we may not look to 

 see him contradict himself quite so promptly. 

 He has said, and that in the paragraph next 

 preceding the definition of variety, that all 

 species not most of them but all of them 

 were constituted such by the Creator in the 

 very beginning of the existence of plant life 

 and form. He will not subvert this propo- 

 sition; at least, not in the very next sentence. 

 His notion of a variety is, that it is such 

 alteration of a species as may have been 

 induced by changed conditions of climates, 

 soil, temperature, exposure to or shelter from 

 high winds or any such items of mere environ- 

 ment; and he does not fail to add that, on 



