806 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XXIII. No. 595. 



purposes. The one thing that the authors 

 could have done to save doubt and dispute 

 and perhaps ultimate oblivion for their 

 work— make good specimens of the plants 

 they discussed and deposit them where 

 others might examine them— they very fre- 

 quently did not do. I know morphologists 

 who have gone to all the trouble to work 

 out the embryology of a garden plant and 

 have labeled their hard-earned results with 

 some name perhaps placed on the plant by 

 an irresponsible gardener's boy through 

 comparison with pictures in the florist's 

 catalogue, afterwards holding themselves 

 ready to criticize similar observations made 

 under names obtained in a similar manner 

 in other gardens. The very men who ex- 

 ercise the extremest care in studying the 

 minutest details of the changes in the em- 

 bryo sac are apparently those most likely 

 to be guilty of great carelessness in connec- 

 tion with the identity of the plant they are 

 handling. The highest form of systematic 

 botany is, as some one has recently defined 

 it— a condensed and systematic summary 

 of all existing knowledge of plants, and 

 based as surely upon the histology, em- 

 bryology and physiology of the plants, as 

 upon a study of their superficial characters. 

 And what is being done to remedy our 

 present unhappy condition in this connec- 

 tion? Has there been any general move 

 towards fuller descriptions and the making 

 of really fine detailed illustrations of all 

 the type forms, together with their inter- 

 esting variations and mutations, something 

 after the manner, for instance, of Barbey's 

 monograph of Epilobium? No— at least 

 not among the American flowering plants 

 —but the making of manuals goes merrily 

 on, with some of the makers still talking 

 of defining .species from single specimens, 

 in other words, attempting to define a 

 whole that they have never seen, from a 

 mere mummified fragment, which origi- 



nally may have been some stray mutant 

 and far from typical of the so-called 

 'specific' group to which it pertains. 



The anomaly of this old position is most 

 evident when preceded, as it often is, by 

 the attempted definition of a species, in 

 which it is often frankly acknowledged 

 that a 'species' in most cases is a plastic 

 and unknown quantity. Even at this late 

 date I have actually found curators of 

 herbaria who consider each species suffi- 

 ciently represented by a single specimen; 

 and not long ago a bryologist- wrote me: 

 'Why do you collect these odd and variable 

 forms which only confuse the taxonomist? 

 You had better spend your time searching 

 for good typical forms.' He has not yet 

 explained to me what good typical forms 

 are. And if there is a group of plants in 

 which the most extended studies of the 

 comparative anatomy of individuals is 

 more needed than among the American 

 mosses, I should be interested to know of it. 



There is no intention here to decry the 

 use of manuals, especially if they contain 

 full references to certain specimens in cer- 

 tain herbaria, in which case they are use- 

 ful annotated catalogues. Even the gen- 

 eral citation of exsiccati numbers for the 

 older distributions is not to be depended 

 upon, because the loose indefiniteness of the 

 manuals strongly influences collectors also, 

 and in numerous instances a number of 

 wholly distinct forms have been sent out 

 under the same number, rendering the 

 citation of the herbarium also necessary. 



Those species with comparatively sharp- 

 cut and unchanging lines are, as a rule, 

 doomed unless quite perfectly isolated. 

 They are of great interest. However, I 

 can not conceive but that the supreme in- 

 terest of the physiologist, the taxonomist, 

 the ecologist and the morphologist must 

 rest always with the numerous and usually 



