DOG-ROSE AND BRAMBLKS. 127 



Lastly, the two or three shorten dwarf forms, with 

 numerous straight slender prickles, are variously lumped 

 together as burnet roses, or else divided into two or more 

 distinct species, according to the taste and fancy of the 

 observer. The names we choose to give them and the 

 lines we choose to draw are mere matters of human con- 

 venience in nomenclature : the one patent fact which all 

 close lookers can see for themselves is this that through- 

 out the whole series every single character of stem, leaf, 

 bud, flower, fruit, or seed varies indefinitely, till the at- 

 tempt really to discriminate between the types becomes 

 practically impossible. 



It is much the same with their neighbors the brambles. 

 Here, ordinary mortals have long since distinguished two 

 fairly marked types, because of their different berries ; 

 and when you get a difference in the berry you touch the 

 intelligence of mankind at once in one of its tenderest 

 and deepest susceptibilities. So these two species have 

 acquired colloquial names as blackberries and dewberries. 

 But in between them an indefinite number of links exist, 

 which can no more be separated from one another than 

 humanity could be separated into three distinct groups of 

 white-haired, black-haired, and red-haired people. On 

 the other hand, the so-called blackberry bushes differ so 

 much among themselves in less conspicuous organs that 

 they have been sometimes divided into from six to forty 

 species, and sometimes lumped together again into one. 



In the older days of natural science our Dryasdusts 

 fought fiercely with one another over these questions of 

 specific identity or difference : nowadays, we are all 

 mostly agreed that such variations must naturally occur, 

 and that the attempt to reduce them all to artificial sym- 

 metry is as impossible as it is futile. In some cases 

 species are well marked off from one another, because 



