626 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLVI. No. 1200 



and resources of western China are good 

 examples. 



Yet it is in the old regions as well as in 

 the new that novelties still come to the 

 hand of the systematist. Every edition of 

 the manuals of the plants of the northeast- 

 ern United States, for example, contains 

 large additions. These acquisitions are in 

 some part the result of new introductions, 

 running wild ; in an important part the dis- 

 covery of species heretofore overlooked; in 

 large part, also, the results of redefinition, 

 known as "splitting" of species. 



This splitting is not alone the result of a 

 desire to "make new species," but is the 

 operation of a new psychology. In every- 

 thing we are rapidly becoming partieu- 

 larists. In the time of Gray we studied 

 plants as aggregates, trying to make them 

 match something else ; now we study them 

 as segregates, trying to make them differ 

 from everything else. This diversity in 

 process accounts for the extension of 

 CEnothera, Carex, Bubus, Malus, Cratcegus. 

 Whatever may be said of the relative ranks 

 of the newly described species in a scheme of 

 coordination, we should thereby neverthe- 

 less understand the forms better than here- 

 tofore and refine both our discrimination 

 and our definition. Probably we do not yet 

 really understand any one of the more rep- 

 resentative genera of plants of the north- 

 eastern United States. 



In making these remarks I am not com- 

 mending the practise of those who would 

 divide and redivide minutely, and who 

 would carry descriptive botany to such a 

 point of refinement that only the close 

 specialist can know the forms. Under 

 such circumstances, systematic work de- 

 feats its own ends. 



It is, after all, to the plants of the older 

 lands that the systematist must constantly 

 bring his closer observation, new meas- 

 urements, accumulation of facts, keener 



judgments, truer interpretation of environ- 

 ment, profounder estimation of relation- 

 ships that can be expressed by classifica- 

 tion. He is not merely a describer of 

 novelties, giving new names ; he discrimi- 

 nates, re-defines, applies the results of latest 

 collateral science, suggests new meanings. 

 His studies, as any others, must be kept 

 alive and up to date. He must continually 

 better serve any student of plants. There 

 is no more end to the work of the systema- 

 tist than to that of the geneticist. 



Every large or variable group needs to 

 be reworked at least every twenty-five 

 years. In fact, it is an advantage to have a 

 group worked simultaneously by separate 

 monographers, that we may have more 

 than one method and more than one judg- 

 ment brought to bear on the problem. "We 

 must outgrow the idea that there is any 

 finality in even the best monograph. Fre- 

 quent review and sifting of evidence are as 

 necessary in systematology and taxonomy 

 as in morphology. 



We do not realize that there is now ap- 

 pearing the modern systematist, who is not 

 an herbarium hack, but a good field man, 

 an evolutionist and plant geographer, one 

 highly skilled in identification, and rein- 

 forced by much collateral training of a 

 highly specialized character. This man 

 has come quite unaware to most of us. 

 Among the phytographers are those who 

 are primarily cataloguers, sorters and bib- 

 liographers, of great skill; but the real 

 systematist is a highly trained scientist. 



I regret that the contribution of this man 

 is frequently so little evidenced in the proc- 

 esses of college teaching. Graduates may 

 be sent forth to instruct in botany so inno- 

 cent of kinds of plants and of the means of 

 finding them out as to be lost when placed 

 in a strange country, wandering blankly 

 among the subjects they are supposed to 

 teach. 



