246 AMERICAN MIDLAND NATURALIST ` 
on, I read in regular sequence the captions following: The Phys- 
iologic Aspect of the Species Question; The Physiologic Aspect 
of a Species; An Ecologic View of the Species Conception; An 
Ecologic Aspect of the Conception of the Species; and having 
viewed these several titles in line, and noted that unity in diversity 
which they evince, I saw how the taxonomists in deference to the 
titles. chosen by the physiologist and the ecologist, had been obliged 
to introduce a corresponding modifier into their own title. They 
had courteously waived their rights as the sole real custodians of the 
Species Question, and had inserted terms by which, what would 
have been their own simple rightful caption became a distorted 
pleonasm. It was done out of courtesy, and is on that ground 
excusable and excused. 
But am I to be excused by my friends physiologic and eco- 
logic for having seemed to deny them any right in the subject 
of taxonomy? I shall be, when once they have understood me. 
If any one of these by his researches physiologic or ecologic comes 
upon new facts seeming to bear on taxonomy, and he make. the 
application, or suggest, even, its taxonomic usefulness, he is in 
that become, for the time, a taxonomist himself. 
But that which is of unusual interest in this Report of the 
Symposium is an aspect of the species question not named in any 
of the formal papers,—indeed not named at all—but which one 
detects in the reading of the reports of the informal discussion 
which is said to have followed the presentation of the titled papers, 
and which appears to be as far removed as possible from the scien- 
tific; even disclosing itself in a guise which leads one to question 
whether it may not well be designated the industrial aspect of the 
species question; though that may perchance be seen, by and by, to 
oo lax and indefinitive an expression to be employed. The most 
entertaining thing about this particular viewpoint is the proposal 
that in genera where species are thought, from whosesoever point of 
view is not stated—to be inconveniently numerous, there shall be a 
kind of enforced reduction of the number, and that by what 
oo, threatens to be made a mer ely arithmetic rule. There was even a sug- 
. . gestion of the probable proportion of two-thirds of the species, and 
. this suggestion met with warm approval from at least one corner 
. €f the symposium. Such suggestion, should it be adopted as 
rule to proceed by in this arbitrary reduction, would work in 
this way. d We esum ee Fernald 
