THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPECIES-MAKING:' 
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1. THE SpeciEs-ConcEeptTion.—It is probable that the forms 
of life have sprung from one common or original point. At all 
events, there seems to be a general series of convergent his- 
tories in organic nature, when one attempts to trace genealogies. 
These multitudes of forms seem to bear some definite and inti- 
mate relation to the circumstances under which they live and 
grow; in fact, they appear to have resulted from the splitting up 
and modification of the original plasma by means of the contest 
of numbers and the changes and diversifications in the physical 
characters of the earth. There are as many forms or kinds of life 
as there are diverse and disputed places upon the earth, and the 
forms no doubt are still, for the most part, slowly adjusting 
themselves to the continuing changes in the conditions in which 
they grow. We now have the best of reasons for believing that 
the organic creation is a plastic one, and that it will continue 
to be modified so long as it is possible for life to exist upon me 
globe. If the forms of life shall finally perish, the extinction 
will be preceded by a long process of diminution of virility com- 
ing as an adjustment to increasingly untoward conditions. — 
When men first began the serious study of the forms of life, 
they were still convinced that the creation is a congeries of 
objects which had come directly from the hand of the Creator, 
a collection or a patchwork of most curious things. The intel- 
lectual grasp of the creation was not yet comprehensive enough 
to suggest, to many minds at least, that the umiverse 1 one 
thing, one conception, a unity in method ; the mind therefore 
rested upon the individual objects and logically exalted them 
into the sphere of units in the creation. In other words, the 
ultimate units, the entities, in organic nature were, to the early 
* Read by title before The Botanical Society of America, August 1896. 
DECEMBER ] 
