LINNAEUS AS AN EVOLUTIONIST 79 



was quite that which the author meant to 

 convey. There could be no doubt. Putting 

 it into plain English prose; making it read 

 as one would now write the same thought, 

 his note on Thalictrum lucidum is this : ' ' The 

 plant is possibly not so very distinct from 

 T. flavum. It seems to me to be the product 

 of its environment." 



As helping toward a full understanding of 

 this pregnant remark it must be said that 

 the species flavum inhabits the cool moist 

 meadows of northern Europe, while lucidum 

 belongs to southern France and to Spain. 

 Each has then decidedly its own environment. 

 Each was known to be equally established 

 as a permanent and indigenous plant form. 

 Linna3us's reason for naming flavum as the 

 parent and lucidum as the offspring was a 

 reason no better than this: T. flavum was 

 of his own northern country and he knew it 

 well. T. lucidum was a southerner, and he 

 was less familiar with it; probably had never 

 seen it but in a northern garden. That was 

 all. It was a thing far enough from being 

 amenable to his definition of a variety. It 

 seemed a species; yet he doubted that it was 

 any more than a daughter species to Thalic- 

 trum flavum. The one had been created a 



