July 18, 1900.] 



SCIENCE. 



53 



The greater part of the species and va- 

 rieties that pass the necessarily fine-meshed 

 sieve of to-day are published and defined 

 apart from their nearest relatives, so that 

 their authors are commonly spared the diffi- 

 culty of really arranging them in the system, 

 and it is doubtful if some species which are 

 now being published would really stand in 

 the minds of their authors were the latter 

 compelled to clearly differentiate them in a 

 comprehensive treatment of the genus to 

 which they belong. 



Perhaps the most instructive current 

 effort at a logical co-ordination of the 

 groups of high and low degree is afforded 

 by the Synopsis of the Middle-European 

 Flora now being published by Ascherson «& 

 Graebner, who treat the broadly defined 

 groups which Linnseus would have called 

 species as ' collective species,' as subdi- 

 visions of which they then recognize spe- 

 cies, subspecies, occasionally of several de- 

 grees, races, varieties, subvarieties and 

 sports. To subspecies as well as species 

 and collective species they give binomial 

 designations, which unfortunately in a few 

 cases, but not as a rule, are identical. A 

 very good idea of the working of this sys- 

 tem may be obtained from their treatment 

 of the Cystea angustata of Smith, or the 

 Andropogon niger of Kunth. 



If the need of subdividing the groups of 

 plants which have heretofore passed as 

 species were no greater for any purposes 

 than for the determination of, for instance, 

 the wild plants of the Middle-European 

 flora, it might not be worth while to fol- 

 low this subject further or to modify a 

 treatment which gives a possible trinomial 

 for any form which the authors have de- 

 sired to designate, and in the actual synopsis 

 locates this form in its logical position. 

 Unfortunately, however, unless botany for 

 herborizers is to be a thing quite apart from 

 botany for horticulturists, the general mon- 

 ographer of Cystopteris,Athyriuin, Andropogon, 



Eubus or Pyrus must soon handle a far greater 

 number of forms and subforms of all degrees 

 than have been attempted even in the most 

 comprehensive schemes yet attempted. 



Horticulturists are trying to distinguish 

 between their more transient artificial pro- 

 ductions, and natural forms or those which 

 are more closely comparable with such 

 forms. For the former they are trying with 

 more or less consistency and real desire to 

 secure the uniform adoption of simple ver- 

 nacular names, while for the latter, perhaps 

 with equal consistency and earnestness, 

 they are trying to follow the practice of the 

 botanists, so far as they can ascertain what 

 that is. The actual result of this effort is, 

 for instance, to recognize, in the orchard and 

 the market, a variety of Greening apple 

 known as the Ehode Island, to which each 

 farmer's son and each clerk in the commis- 

 sion house receives personal introduction as 

 he would to a new neighbor or a new cus- 

 tomer, and the distinguishing marks of 

 which he familiarizes himself with as he 

 would with those of a man whom he might 

 want to know if he were to see him again. 



This is not far different from the way in 

 which men made themselves acquainted 

 with herbs and simples before the day of 

 books. It is very good so far as it goes, but 

 it is neither scientific nor adapted to even 

 the present complexity of that theoretical 

 horticulture which every year is finding 

 greater exemplification in practice. To ad- 

 vance on it, the gardener must fall back on 

 the botanist, whose task will be to system- 

 atize what the gardener knows and what his 

 own broader knowledge of plants may add. 

 Now the simple matter becomes compli- 

 cated. Pyrus Mollis, for example, represents 

 a species or collective species under which 

 many hybrids and varieties now hopelessly 

 jumbled are capable of arrangement in log- 

 ical combinations, through which, when 

 they shall have been made, the trained 

 student can run down the Rhode Island or 



