MULTIPLICATION OF SPECIES 467 



1 Many specimens/ he exclaims to Bentham, when he finds 

 two of his new New Zealand species are old Tasmanian ones 

 (July 30, 1856), ' always break down characters/ and he avows, 

 ' it is a bad sign of genus when it is extremely difficult to refer 

 new species to any of the others/ (February 5, 1852.) 



Long before he impressed the fact on Darwin (p. 457) 

 he was well aware that those who deal with an incomplete 

 flora or a small number of specimens are apt to define isolated 

 varieties as so many new species. Accordingly, to arrive at 

 trustworthy fact, these irregular results of the * personal 

 equation ' among describers must be regularised, at whatever 

 cost of labour in examining new or re-examining old material, 

 and so he groans at discovering in the work of a voluminous 

 botanist ' an unfathomable gulf between him and right under- 

 standing.' 



A few examples may be given of his dealing with the 

 excessive multiplication of species and the consequent over- 

 lapping and confusion. 



On September 24, 1851, just when the last boxes of his 

 Indian collections have arrived, he tells Bentham : 



Klotzsch [then in Berlin] offers to make a frightful 

 mess of the Ehododendrons, cutting the genus into 20 and 

 placing varieties of one species into two or more genera, 

 and allied species into each throughout ; it is dreadful ; 

 he wants me to be partner in his crimes. 



Three months later he describes himself as ' swimming in 

 synonymy/ and on March 20, 1852, writes to Harvey : 



What a glorious Grass-man Munro is ; he reduces my 

 father's Herb, to about 1600 species ! I quite expected 

 they would come down to 2000. 



Six days later : 



Munro has named nearly all my Paniceae and finds 5 

 new species ! I think I should have sent them to Steudel, 

 who (Munro tells me) is going to make a monograph of 

 Panicum alone, containing 500 species ! Munro and I 

 made 86 as I think in Herb. Hook, 



