136 THE SURVIVAL OF THE UNLIKE. [iV. 



ventional sense, is au incubus to the study of nature. 

 One who now describes a species should feel that he is 

 simply describing a variable and plastic group of indi- 

 viduals for mere convenience's sake. He should not at- 

 tempt to draw the boundary lines hard and fast, nor 

 should he be annoyed if he is obliged to modify his de- 

 scription every year. This loose group may contain some 

 forms which seem to be aberrant to the idea which he 

 has in mind; and it would seem as if he should be ready 

 to call them new or distinct species whenever, from 

 whatever cause, they become so much modified that it is 

 convenient, for purposes of identification and description, 

 to separate them from the general type. Just as soon as 

 botanists come to feel that all so-called species of plants 

 are transitory and artificial groups maintained for 

 convenience in the study of nature, they will not ask 

 whether they are modified outside the garden or inside 

 it, but will consider groups of equal distinctness and 

 permanence to be of equal value in the classification of 

 knowledge, wholly aside from the mere place of their 

 origin. At the present time, the garden fence is the only 

 distinction between many accepted species and many dis- 

 regarded ones. The cultivation of man differs from the 

 methods of nature only in degree, not in kind; and if 

 man secures results sooner than nature does it is only 

 another and indubitable proof of the evolution of organic 

 forms. It is certainly a wholly unscientific attitude to 

 demand that forms originating by one of nature's 

 methods are species, while similar forms originating by 

 another method are beneath notice. 



If species are not original entities in nature, then it 

 is useless to quarrel over the origination of them by 

 means of experiment. All we want to know, as a proof 



