io PROBLEMS OF GENETICS 



of the older countries were re-examined with a fresh zeal and on 

 a scale of quantity previously unattempted. But the problem 

 how to name the forms and where to draw lines, how much 

 should be included under one name and where a new name was 

 required, all this was felt, rather as a cataloguer's difficulty 

 than as a physiological problem. And so we still hear on the 

 one hand of the confusion caused by excessive "splitting" and 

 subdivisions, and on the other of the uncritical "lumpers" who 

 associate together under one name forms which another collector 

 or observer would like to see distinguished. 



In spite of Darwin's hopes, the acceptance of his views has 

 led to no real improvement — scarcely indeed to any change at 

 all in either the practice or aims of systematists. In a famous 

 passage in the Origin he confidently declares that when his 

 interpretation is generally adopted "Systematists will be able 

 to pursue their labours as at present; but they will not be in- 

 cessantly haunted by the shadowy doubt whether this or that 

 form be a true species. This, I feel sure, and I speak after 

 experience, will be no slight relief. The endless disputes whether 

 or not some fifty species of British brambles are good species 

 will cease." Those disputes nevertheless proceed almost ex- 

 actly as before. It is true that biologists in general do not, 

 as formerly, participate in these discussions because they have 

 abandoned systematics altogether; but those who are engaged 

 in the actual work of naming and cataloguing animals and 

 plants usually debate the old questions in the old way. There 

 is still the same divergence of opinion and of practice, some in- 

 clining to make much of small differences, others to neglect 

 them. 



Not only does the work of the sytematists as a whole proceed 

 as if Darwin had never written but their attitude towards these 

 problems is but little changed. In support of this statement I may 

 refer to several British Museum Catalogues, much of the Biologia 

 Centrali- Americana, Ridgway's Birds of North America, the 

 Fauna Hawaiensis, indeed to almost any of the most important 

 systematic publications of England, America, or any other 

 country. These works are compiled by the most proficient 



