Apeil 30, 1897.] 



SCIENCE. 



687 



it is an interesting fact that the coyote of 

 the Little Missouri is bleached compared to 

 the coyote of the upper Mississippi, and 

 that he has larger teeth than the coyote of 

 the Rio Grande ; but it seems to me to be un- 

 wise to separate all these forms by giving 

 them rank that would imply that they 

 differ from one another as much as they 

 differ from the great gray wolves of the 

 same region. I understand perfectly that 

 this is not what Dr. Merriam means, and 

 that he would subdivide the genus into 

 various groups so as to show that the 

 species are not of equal value. Neverthe- 

 less, the fact remains that the important 

 point is the essential likeness of all the 

 coyotes one to the other, and their essential 

 difference from the big wolves with which 

 they are associated, and which are them- 

 selves essentially like the big wolves of 

 Europe and north Asia ; and it seems to 

 me that these facts can best be brought out 

 by including the coyote and the wolf in one 

 genus and treating each as a species. Then 

 the geographical and other varieties niay or 

 may or may not be treated as worthy of sub- 

 specific rank according to the exigencies of 

 the particular case. The alternative is to 

 use terms of super- specific value, including 

 groups of minutely separated species ; and 

 this would be clumsy and would hardly 

 seem worth while. 



I will illustrate what I mean by referring 

 to some other mammals. The points of re- 

 semblance between beasts like the wolver- 

 ines, the beavers and the moose of the two 

 northern continents are far more impor- 

 tant than the points of difference. In each 

 of these cases it does not matter much 

 whether these animals are given separate, 

 specific rank, because in each case the Old 

 "World and the New "World representatives 

 make up the whole genus ; but even here it 

 would seem to be a mistake to separate 

 them specifically unless they are distin- 

 guished by characters of more than trivial 



weight. The wapiti and Scotch red deer, 

 for instance, are markedly different, and 

 the differences are so great that they should 

 be expressed by the use of specific terms. 

 If the American moose and Scandanavian 

 elk are distinguished by specific terms of 

 the same value, then it ought to mean that 

 there is something like the same difference 

 between them that there is between the red 

 deer and the wapiti, and as far as our pres- 

 ent knowledge goes this is not so. The wol- 

 verines, beavers and moose of the two con- 

 tinents should only be separated by specific 

 terms, if the differences between each couple 

 are of some weight, if they approximate the 

 differences which divide the red deer and 

 the wapiti, for instance — and I know that 

 even these two may intergrade. 



I would not dogmatically assert that even 

 though forms intergrade they should not 

 be sometimes separated by specific titles. 

 In their extreme forms the grizzly bear and 

 the little black bear are certainly utterly 

 different, and I have shot these extreme 

 forms within a mile of one another on the 

 Big Horn Mountains. Whether they inter- 

 grade or not, there should be a sharp line 

 of difference drawn between the typical 

 representatives of these two kinds of bears ; 

 but I confess that I think that many of the 

 multitude of ' species ' of holarctic bears 

 will have to be reduced to less than 

 specific rank before we get a very clear 

 idea of the true relationship of the bears of 

 North America and northern Eurasia. 

 The excessive multiplication of species based 

 on trivial points of difference merely serves 

 to obscure the groupings v/hich are based 

 on differences of real weight. Moreover, it 

 has always seemed to me unwise to make 

 the word species depend solely upon the 

 accident of the survival or non-survival of 

 some connecting link. Two closely con- 

 nected forms may not intergrade, while two 

 widely separated forms may ; and it seems 

 to me the term species should express the 



