34 II. WHAT IS A SPECIES ? 



divide plants into species. If the latter could extend his 

 views and practice over the whole vegetable world, he 

 would probably reckon up five or ten times the number 

 of species, that would be sanctioned and believed in by 

 the former able systematist. And turning to minor 

 luminaries, the differences between a Bromfield and a 

 Babington, in respect to species and varieties among 

 British plants, would probably have been equivalent to 

 ten per cent., if not to twenty per cent., of the whole 

 flora of the British Islands. And yet it may be, that 

 those two observant English botanists would have closely 

 concurred in their abstract ideas and definitions of the 

 term species. 



Definitions and tests about species, indeed, are more 

 frequently admitted in theory than adhered to in practice. 

 The prevailing custom with botanical describers, espe- 

 cially the more local describers, is that of looking out 

 almost exclusively for differences, by aid of which the 

 plants can plausibly be described as true species. They 

 do not group individuals into species; — tiiey separate 

 them into species. Small botanists who can achieve 

 nothing higher in science, make haste to name specifi- 

 cally, and to describe accordingly, every or any form 

 ■which they happen to meet with ; doing this seemingly 

 on the chance that it may turn out to be a species, and 

 that they may thus gain the credit of a discovery. Sen- 

 sible of the injurious consequences from such practices, a 

 recent reviewer of De Candolle's ' Geographie Botanique' 

 thus concludes his well-penned article : — 



" Systematic botany, which it has been the fashion of 

 late years to hold in so much contempt, is nevertheless 

 the groundwork upon which the correctness of the specu- 

 lations of the physiologist and geographical botanist must 

 mainly depend. But the botanist who devotes himself to 



