APPLICATION OF THE QUANTITATIVE METHOD 209 



diversity of the forms of life ; they become rather indifferent to 

 the splendour of living nature. 



When they are told that in a certain collection 5000 species of birds are 

 brought together, they do not realize what that means. They know the 

 anatomy and the embryology of the chicken ; they have an idea of the duck 

 and the pigeon ; they know the peculiarities of the skeleton of the ostrich. 

 Is that not enough ? Why should they waste their time with 5000 variants of 

 the type bird ? When the laboratory botanist reads in a book that in Greece, 

 Italy and Spain, thousands of Phanerogams are found which are unknown 

 in Central Europe, his curiosity is not awakened. He knows the most im- 

 portant forms of temperate Europe ; why should he bother about their 

 Mediterranean representatives ? I was myself in that state of mind for years . 



The majority of the biologists of the modern school take from 

 an unlimited forest a few branches which they investigate 

 thoroughly, but they hardly know the trees the branches of 

 which they are studying, and they have not a clear idea of the 

 immensity of the forest, although they believe they have. The 

 systematists walk and travel through the forest, but they do 

 not know what is found within a branch. 



Such a state of things is detrimental to the progress of our 

 science. It is not with impunity that we have disunited the 

 right and the left hand. The one-handed method has given us, 

 on the whole, what it possibly could give. On many sides our 

 science seems to be at a standstill, because we are faced with 

 fundamental problems which will remain insoluble as long as 

 we do not combine the use of both hands. 



§ 145.— VAGUENESS AND INCOMPLETENESS OF 

 SPECIFIC AND GENERIC DESCRIPTIONS.— The living 

 beings are described in our floras and faunas by means of terms. 

 Unfortunately the terms are often vague ; there is even some- 

 thing mysterious in their use. We are told, for instance, in one 

 of our best floras, that the leaves of Deschampsia flexuosa (a 

 grass) are short, with a long sheath. According to my measure- 

 ments the length of the leaf (blade) varies in this species between 

 8 and 112 mm., and the limits of variation of the length of the 

 sheath are 37 and 175 mm.^ What is long and what is short ? 

 According to the book a sheath of 50 mm. is long and a blade of 

 100 mm. is short. The imperfection of the descriptive method 

 is obvious. 



When figures are given they are often hardly approximate, 

 or quite inexact. We find in a classic book that m Phlcum 

 pratense the length of the inflorescence varies between 25 

 and 100 mm. (1-4 inches) ; the limits I have found are 8 and 

 194 mm. 1 We are told in the same book that in Triodia 

 decumbens the upper empty glume is 3-nerved. This is given 



» I have limited myself to the upper leaf of the fertile stem. 

 O 



