THE ANNALS 



AKD 



MAGAZINE OF NATURAL HISTORY. 



[THIRD SERIES.] 

 No. 68. AUGUST 1863. 



VIII. — Species considered as to Variation, Geographical Distribu- 

 tion, and Succession. By Prof. Asa Gray*. 



It is well known to botanists that M. DeCandoUe has been 

 assiduously engaged in the elaboration of the order Cupuliferse 

 for the 'Prodromus/ and has had before him the authentic 

 types of almost every published species, and an amount of ma- 

 terials as to many of them which, so far as dried specimens may 

 serve, leaves little to be asked. A less inspiring task could 

 hardly be assigned to a botanist than the systematic elaboration 

 of the genus Quercus and its allies. The vast materials assem- 

 bled under DeCandolle's hands, while disheartening for their 

 bulk^ offered small hope of novelty. The subject was both ex- 

 tremely trite and extremely difficult. Happily, it occurred to 

 DeCandolle that an interest might be imparted to an onerous 

 undertaking, and a work of necessity be turned to good account 

 for science, by studying the Oaks in view of the question of 

 Species. 



What this term Species means, or should mean, in natural 

 history, what the limits of species, inter se or chronologically, 

 or in geographical distribution, their modifications, actual or 

 probable, their origin, and their destiny, — these are questions 

 which surge up from time to time ; and now and then, in the 

 progress of science, they come to assume a new and hopeful 

 interest. Botany and zoology, geology and what our author, 

 feeling the want of a new term, proposes to name Epiontology\ , 



* From Silliman's American Journal for May 1863. 



t A name which, at the close of his article, DeCandolle proposes for 

 the study of the succession of organized beings, to comprehend therefore 

 palaeontology and all included under what is called geographical botany 

 and zoology, the whole forming a science parallel to geology, — the latter 

 devoted to the history of unorganized bodies, the former to that of or- 



Ann.^ Mag, N. Hist. Ser.3. Vol.xii. 6 



