LINNEAN SOCIETY OF LONDON. XXXI 



in form, especially as to tlie diagnoses destined to facilitate the 

 finding out the names of plants. 



The observations of detail made by local European botanists 

 upon the vegetation of their own several districts are of great 

 value ; they form the principal data for establishing the limits of 

 species, races, or varieties, for determining those facts of geo- 

 graphical distribution upon the correctness of which must depend 

 all speculations as to their causes, for leading us to a history of 

 the life of a species as well as of the individual. Even the mania 

 for characterizing every variation of form as a species has no doubt 

 brought to light many curious facts illustrating the frequent here- 

 ditary permanency of minutely aberrant forms once produced, and 

 corrected many of our previous ideas of the absoluteness of any 

 test by which we can determine what is or what is not a species ; 

 and within the last few years these local observations have been 

 as numerous and important as at any previous period ; the 

 Journals and Transactions of local Societies, of which I last 

 year gave a sketch, are full of them. But they are mixed up with 

 so much of repetition, so many long details that have been given 

 over and over again, so much of patient observation and lengthened 

 explanation to prove results of no use whatever to the botanist, 

 general or special, that these papers are for the most part practi- 

 cally ignored. This is nowhere more fearfully exemplified than 

 in Jordan's recently published " Diagnoses d'especes nouvelles 

 ou meconnues," the adoption of which would surely produce any- 

 thing but a " flore reformee " of France and adjacent districts. 

 Supposing, even, he were to succeed in proving that Draba verna 

 is divisible into nearly a hundred distinguishable varieties or races, 

 we may well ask in what does that advance science ? for what 

 purpose, systematic, physiological, phytogeographical, or practical, 

 can we ever want to treat of Draba verna but as a single aggre- 

 gate ? We cannot but hope, therefore, that those acute observers 

 who devote themselves to the study of critical plants will care- 

 fully go through all these innovations, pick out the sterling coin 

 from the chaff in which it is buried, and consign the results to the 

 new French and Grerman Floras, or new editions, several of which 

 must shortly be required, retaining for the benefit of the general 

 botanist the species in the Linnsean sense (now often called super- 

 species), attach to them any new characters discovered, eliminate 

 all descriptions (beyond a simple mention) of such evanescent hy- 

 brids as occur often only in a single individual, and reduce all sub- 

 species and minor varieties to their proper level. 



