IV.] DOES NATURE MAKE SPECIES? 133 



the accepted practice of the best botanists themselves, 

 could be indefinitely extended. We need only recall the 

 botanical confusion in which most cultivated plants now 

 lie, to find abundant proof of the evolution of hundreds 

 of types so distinct that the best botanists have consid- 

 ered them to be species; but other botanists, basing their 

 estimate of species upon origins, have reduced them or 

 re -included them into the form or type first described. 

 Consider the number of species which have been made 

 in the genus Citrus, comprising the various oranges, 

 lemons, limes and the like. Recall the roses. The Moss 

 rose and others would be regarded as distinct species by 

 any botanist if they were found wild, and if they held 

 their characters as tenaciously as they do under cultiva- 

 tion. In fact, the Moss rose was long regarded as a 

 good species, and it was only when its origin began to 

 be understood that this opinion was given up. The 

 earlier botanists, who were less critical about origins 

 than the present botanists are, made species largely upon 

 apparent features of plants, although their fundamental 

 conception of a species was one which was created, as we 

 find it, in the beginning. Yet, strangely enough, we at 

 the present day, who profess to regard species as nothing 

 more than loose and conventional aggregations of similar 

 individuals, and which we conceive to have sprung from 

 a common ancestor at some more or less late epoch in 

 the world's history, make our species upon premises 

 which we deny, by giving greater weight to obscurity 

 of origin than we do to similarity of individuals ! 



The fact is that the practice of systematic or descrip - 

 tive botany is at variance with the teachings of evo- 

 lution. Every naturalist now knows that nature does 

 not set out to make species. She makes a multitude of 



