Septembee 27, 1901'.] 



SCIENCE, 



467 



stirred to a more critical attitude toward 

 work defective in foriQ. But important ad- 

 vance can only emanate from the authors 

 themselves. They should take a greater 

 pride in the style of their publications, 

 should realize that lucidity of exposition 

 goes far to carry conviction, while obscurity 

 is positive injustice to their coworkers. 



Let us take, for instance, the publication 

 of a new species. The requisites of a good 

 description are generally known. There 

 should be the habital picture, giving in a 

 few words an idea of the general form, 

 size and nature of the plant as a whole ; 

 then a considerable number of features 

 should be tersely described ; special care 

 should be taken to point out the differential 

 characteristics by which the plant is dis- 

 tinguished from its nearest relatives ; and 

 finally full information should be given with 

 regard to the occurrence of the species, its 

 type, locality, collector, date and exsiccati- 

 number of the type-specimen, with a men- 

 tion of the herbarium in which it is to be 

 found. These are usually simple matters, 

 and their business-like statement in rela- 

 tion to every new species is a generally- 

 recognized obligation of its author to his 

 colleagues, yet it is safe to say that not one- 

 half of the species published during the last 

 year have received descriptions which ful- 

 filled these simple conditions. 



On the one hand insufficient character- 

 izations still occur. A well-known botanist 

 has recently described a new leafy- stemmed 

 phanerogam, without mentioning root, stem, 

 branches, leaves, pubescence, calyx or fruit. 

 However, this sort of insufficient descrip- 

 tion is becoming rare. The need of fullness 

 is widely recognized, and great improve- 

 ment in thia regard has been manifested in 

 recent years. Enough is generally said. 

 Quantity in the description is no longer 

 such a desideratum as proper arrangement, 

 judicious selection, and especially some 

 form of emphasis by which the really im- 



portant, invariable, and therefore diag- 

 nostic, features may stand out in high re- 

 lief. As I have said, the author of a new 

 species owes clarity to his colleagues. This 

 obligation is not fulfilled by a page and a 

 half of description in which, without partic- 

 ular emphasis, all manner of characteristics 

 are given, ranging from those which con- 

 cern a group or even family down to others 

 so detailed as to apply only to the single 

 specimen in hand. Here is another possi- 

 bility for advance, namely, the discrimina- 

 tion and proper emphasis of differential 

 characteristics in description. 



Here authors can bring to bear all the 

 keenness of insight which they possess. 

 To estimate correctly the value of plant 

 differences is by no means easy. To a great 

 extent their permanence and consequent 

 taxonomic significance can only be a matter 

 of inference based upon a knowledge of 

 similar differences in other groups. This 

 fact seems to have discouraged some of our 

 systematists to such an extent that they 

 wish to escape all responsibility in relation 

 to the matter. They give what is called a 

 good full description without the slightest 

 effort to show the relative importance of 

 the points they mention. They trust that 

 a future monographer will somehow ex- 

 tract from their miscellaneous statements 

 or find upon their so-called tj^pes certain 

 significant differences which will serve to 

 distinguish their plants from all others. 



It may be doubted, however, whether a 

 writer is justified in publishing a species 

 until he sees with clearness its difierential 

 characteristics, and certainly when he sees 

 them he has no right to hide them without 

 any mark of distinction in a mass of other 

 details of little or no taxonomic significance. 

 Let us hope that, in this regard, the com- 

 ing decade may see the same improvement 

 which the last has witnessed in the increased 

 fullness of descriptions, and that a system- 

 atist's work may be estimated, not by the 



