932 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. XVII. 



' species ' should, he considers, abandon the use of the word. In his 



opinion the ' origin' of species was really the abolition of species, and 



zoologists should now be content to describe, name, draw, and catalogue 



forms. Furthermore, the various groups of forms briefly defined above 



should be separately and distinctly treated by the zoologist, without 



confusion or inference from one to the other. The systematist should 



say, * I describe and name certain forms, a, b, etc. ;' and then he or 



another may write a separate chapter, as it were : — * I now show that 



the forms ab, ac, ad (form names') are syngamic ;' at another time he 



may give reason for regarding any of them as related by epigony.'"* 



6. It is not clear why Prof. Lankester considers the Linnean conception 



untenable, but apparently he considers this a necessary consequence of the 



abandonment of the Linnean doctrine of special creation. Such an attitude, 



however, appears to be hardly justified by the facts. 



It is surely a remarkable fact that Linnaeus and the systematists who 

 followed him recognized that the highest ideal which systematic botanists 

 could strive to attain was the elaboration of a natural system of classification 

 with the species as its unit, and which, as Darwin himself says, was in reality 

 " founded on descent with modification - ]-." He says : " With species in a 

 state of nature, every naturalist has, in fact, brought descent into his classifica- 

 tion, for he includes in his lowest grade — that of species — the two sexes ; and 

 how enormously these sometimes differ in the most important characters is 

 known to every naturalist. . . The naturalist includes as one species 

 the various larval stages of the same individual, however much they may 

 differ from each other and from the adult, as well as the so-called alternate 

 generations of steenstrup, which can only in a technical sense be considered as 

 the same individual ... As descent has universally been used in classing 

 together the individuals of the same species . . . may not this same 

 element of descent have been unconsciously used in grouping species under 

 genera, and genera under higher groups, all under the so-called natural system ? 

 I believe it has been unconsciously used ; and thus only can I understand the 

 several rules and guides which have been followed by our best systematistsj." 



Professor Poulton also in his abovementioned address remarks : " As regards 

 the work done by the systematist, we find that Darwin did not agree with those 

 of his friends who thought that a belief in evolution would entirely alter its 

 character." Thus he wrote to Hooper, September 25th, 1853: — " In my own 

 work I have not felt conscious that disbelieving in that mere permanence of 

 species has made much difference one way or the other ; in some few cases (if 

 publishing avowedly on the doctrine of non-permanence) I should not have 

 affixed names, and in some few cases should have affixed names to remarkable 

 varieties."§ 



* Presidential Address to the Entomological Society of London, 20th Jan. 1904, p. xc. 



t Op. cit., p. 346. 

 $ Op. cit., p. 349. 

 § I. c. pp. lxxxviii— lxxxix. 



