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SCIENCE 



[N. 8. Vol. XLIII. No. 1106 



littled descriptive taxonomy because this 

 seemed the popular thing to do, having re- 

 ceived the impression that taxonomy was 

 old-fashioned. Some, also of the younger 

 generation, have come little in contact with 

 the subject during their period of training, 

 hence consider it a very special line which 

 is rather a side issue compared with such 

 subjects as morphology and physiology. 

 Some have felt that a career in systematic 

 botany offered little in the way of reputa- 

 tion or of financial return, and so have 

 entered more promising fields. 



Another reason for the somewhat sus- 

 picious attitude assumed by some botanists 

 toward taxonomy is the prominent part 

 assigned during the last twenty-five years 

 to nomenclature. The creditable desire to 

 place nomenclature upon a sound basis has 

 resulted in many changes in familiar names. 

 Such changes have been embarrassing to 

 morphologists and physiologists who look 

 with disfavor on changes in terminology ex- 

 cept in their own branches. Furthermore 

 there have been auxiliaries who have taken 

 advantage of the unsettled condition of 

 nomenclature to substitute the study of 

 names for the study of plants. 



These reasons, however, are inconseqen- 

 tial. They would deter no one imbued 

 with the scientific spirit. Is not the fact 

 that there has been no satisfactory way of 

 applying the experimental method to the 

 discrimination of species the real reason 

 why descriptive taxonomy has been avoided 

 by so many botanists? In chemistry and 

 physics the relation between cause and 

 effect can be tested and results can be fore- 

 told. In recent years the same method, 

 answering questions by direct test, has been 

 applied in many branches of botany. But 

 in taxonomy one has no definite test by 

 which results can be proved. One may put 

 in years of hard work and seem to get no- 

 where. You will remember how Charles 



Darwin struggled with the classification of 

 barnacles and Asa Gray with asters. I 

 thoroughly sympathize with them, as wiU 

 every botanist who has attempted a serious 

 study of the classification of a difficult 

 group of plants. We work over them for 

 months, patiently noting differences and 

 resemblances, assembling and segregating, 

 seeming to have a scheme nicely worked 

 out, only to have it upset by a new batch of 

 specimens, going through all the stages of 

 hopefulness, satisfaction, doubt, hopeless- 

 ness, and finally tearing our hair and ex- 

 claiming "Confound the things! What's 

 the matter with them, anyway ? ' ' This kind 

 of work does not appeal to the average 

 scientist. He prefers to wrench facts from 

 nature by frontal attack, by applying the 

 experimental method. He wants to do 

 something under controlled conditions and 

 see the result, having the assurance that 

 under the same conditions he will always 

 have the same result. To him this potter- 

 ing over the differences of species is the 

 veriest waste of time — that is, of his time. 

 His attitude towards the classification of 

 species is much like the attitude of descrip- 

 tive taxonomists towards the classification 

 of horticultural varieties. If the horticul- 

 turist classifies the hundreds of varieties of 

 the apple by such characters as color, form, 

 size, markings and time of ripening, the 

 groups will merge into one another. The 

 resulting classification can be used only 

 by those who know the varieties; but if 

 they know the varieties they do not need a 

 classification by which to identify them. 

 This is somewhat exaggerated, but it fairly 

 well represents the way the classifier of 

 species looks at the work of the classifier 

 of horticultural varieties. And I think it 

 represents the way the physiologist looks at 

 the work of the taxonomist. This is not 

 said in disparagement of the work of classi- 

 fying horticultural varieties. It is given 



