SEPTEMBER 8, 1899. ] 
haps also a matter of local pride that the 
most extensive study has been made in one 
of our great Western States, whose flora 
has been as yet comparatively little altered 
by the most potent of all disturbing factors, 
the hand of man. The Phytogeography of 
Nebraska, published a year or two ago by 
Pound and Clements, is the first extended 
study on plant geography in this country 
along distinctively ecological lines. The 
care and completeness with which their in- 
vestigation was made render it a good ex- 
ample for future students of our flora, yet 
one which doubtless succeeding contribu- 
tions will improve upon as the subject 
becomes better organized. As other ex- 
amples of similar study may be mentioned 
the paper of Professor MacMillan upon the 
more restricted flora of the Lake of the 
Woods, and the only partially published 
work of Dr. Cowles upon the flora of the 
Lake Michigan dunes. 
Plant names.—I venture to say that one 
of the most significant results of the study 
of ecology and physiological morphology is 
the growing dissatisfaction which its stu- 
dents feel with present methods of nomen- 
clature, or perhaps I ought to say classifica- 
tion. Ido not refer to the large grouping 
of plants into families, orders and divisions, 
but to the grouping of individual plants 
into species. This dissatisfaction is finding 
its expression among taxonomists as well. 
On the establishment of new species we 
are hearing almost daily the plea that it is 
better to separate into many species a 
group of nearly allied forms, although the 
differences used to distinguish them be very 
much slighter than those heretofore used 
for species. That is, it is better to do vio- 
lence to our old idea of a species than to 
group together forms that in the field are 
easily recognized as unlike. This simply 
means that collectors and systematists are 
recognizing more fully the differences pro- 
duced by unlike environment. It is a mat- 
SCIENCE. 
329 
ter of common remark that the differences 
between individual plants recognized as be- 
longing to one species are often greater 
than those which are used to separate 
species. Domesticated plants so easily 
pass into a variety of forms that for the 
sake of maintaining a rigid idea of specific 
rank cultivated plants have been quietly 
ignored. Now we are coming to see that 
in nature as in cultivation the plant is so 
plastic an organism that it is almost impos- 
sible to group together any individuals ex- 
cept those growing under identical condi- 
tions. What was devised as a convenience— 
namely, the establishment and naming of a 
species—is coming to be more and more of 
doubtful utility. 
I will not undertake to say how much 
this species idea and nomenclature has re- 
tarded the true view of plant plasticity, but 
I feel sure that a good case might be made 
out for such a thesis. Whether any scheme 
ean be devised which can replace the bi- 
nomial nomenclature, whether any better 
method can be used by naturalists for desig- 
nating the organisms which they are study- 
ing, isa matter for the future. J venture 
to prophesy, however, that the present sys- 
tem of nomenclature, by which I do not 
mean any particular kind of practice, 
whether of Paris, or Berlin, or Kew, or 
Cambridge, or Rochester, but the funda- 
mental method of naming plants itself, 
must go. Our mere judgments, which we 
call species, foisted upon plants, do not con- 
duce to a clear understanding of vegetable 
phenomena, but rather blind our eyes to a 
recognition of otherwise obvious truths. 
Some other method of identifying plants 
must be devised. 
CYTOLOGY. 
There is yet one other field whose devel- 
opment I must not fail to mention, though 
it does not pertain wholly to plant physi- 
ology. It goes without saying that the 
