INCLUSIVE DESCRIPTION y 
progress perceptible only after careful comparisons. All of this is 
just what might be expected of species new-born. 
Thoroughly inclusive descriptions of species are impracticable in 
Aster, as in so many other variable genera. Aster descriptions 
must be descriptions of types. It is vain to attempt to make 
descriptions so broad as to include all variations. To attempt com- 
pletely inclusive descriptions is to abandon distinctness, to sacrifice 
all clear results, and to lose the salient features in a general 
average of the inconspicuous. For instance, a typical plant of 
A, divaricatus will produce leaves about twice as long as broad ; 
but some variants may have them reversed and twice as broad as 
long. Again its leaves typically are scarcely roughened at all, are 
thin, are sharply and deeply serrated, are acuminate, are alternate, 
are continuously cordate well up the stem ; but every one of these 
characters is to be found occasionally reversed in plants otherwise 
like the type, and not to be excluded from the species in classifi- 
cation. The species may be described inclusively by stating that 
its “leaves are usually but little roughened, though sometimes 
very much so; leaves thin or thickish ; teeth sharp or often blunt, 
directed outward or often forward or even backward," etc., etc. 
Mere citation of such a mode of description is enough to ensure its 
condemnation, for in losing point it loses utility. The plan I 
adopt is, instead, to describe the species by the characters regarded 
as normal to the type; afterward making separate mention of any 
special lines of variation that may be observed. 
Treatment adopted for species and forms. — My practice is there- 
fore as follows : 
I. To class as species, those which persistently repeat a certain 
body of strong characters ; even though outlying forms exist con- 
necting them with other species. 
2. To class as subspecies, those which exhibit the above repeti- 
tion of characters in a much diminished degree, and appear also to 
be frequently varying back into the type or between themselves. 
If there be doubt whether the plant should be classed as species 
or subspecies, I term it a species, rather than add another cum- 
brous trinomial. 
3. Many subspecific groups display some character of their own 
caliing for recognition, and yet seem too little known or too 
