78 LINN&US AS AN EVOLUTIONIST 



the account of them, if anywhere, in the 

 calendars and catalogues of gardeners, pomol- 

 ogists, nurserymen and florists. 



I have long understood how very definitely 

 and absolutely this fine book, the Philosophia 

 Botanica, excludes every idea of a possibly 

 evolutionary origin for any species of plant. 



And yet, LinnaBus was an evolutionist. 

 Nor is this so passing strange in a world 

 where men in great numbers even some of 

 high standing and great ability say one 

 thing and think the very opposite. 



That he entertained doubts as to the truth- 

 fulness of the proposition that everything that 

 ought to be called a species had been made 

 as it is in the beginning, is a discovery that 

 I made quite fortuitously. In the study 

 of some species of Thalictrum I had need to 

 consult a certain page of the Species Plan- 

 tarum. Reading his account of T. flavum, 

 and next below it that of T. lucidum, his 

 concluding note regarding the species last 

 named quite startled me. His Latin sentence 

 here, as in many another place, is highly 

 figurative, quite after the style of many a 

 classic rhetorician and poet; and I read it 

 again, and very carefully, to see if the idea 

 which the first reading conveyed to my mind 



