CERTAIN ASPECTS OF THE SPECIES QUESTION 249 
that has been carried on by a considerable number of botanists, 
it has come to pass that, where the last generation of manual- 
makers had less than a dozen species for the whole of the United 
States and Canada, those of to-day are confronted by nearly 
a thousand that have been formally named and published within 
.about twenty years; most of them, too, with diagnoses—not a 
few of them with illustrations—that in general seem to bespeak 
valid species, however astounding to us conservatives the fact 
may seem 
And now, what is the aspect of this crataegus question from the 
book-sellers point of view? Suppose that good descriptions of 10 
species, printed in the type usually selected for manuals of botany, 
fill two pages, the printing of which costs $4.00, then diagnoses of 100 
species will fill twenty pages and cost $40.00, and 900 species would 
cost $360.00. Now if the more than 900 North American kinds of 
Crataegus which most reputable botanical gentlemen stand sponsors 
- for, and whose validity they are ready to defend, can by hook or 
by crook be reduced in number by two-thirds, then the cost of 
printing Crataegus for a North American Flora will fall from 
$360.00 to $120.00; and so, if I figure correctly, it looks as if, 
upon my hypothesis as to printers' bills, the neat sum of $240.00 
might be added to the profits of copyright on the score of this 
one genus alone, by the copyright owner who can reduce the now 
existing catalogue of its American species by two-thirds. And 
this illustration which I make by this extreme case of Crataegus, 
throws light enough upon the whole affair. If some hundred of 
smaller genera, such as are credited with but a tithe of 900 species, 
can one after another be cut down in said arithmetical proportion, 
the reduction of their species will of course in the same way aug- 
ment the profits in copyrights. 
There have been generations of good botanists who lived 
peaceable and comfortable lives, also in the enjoyment of tidily 
remunerative copyright in manuals, all undisquieted—or at least 
seldom and not deeply disturbed— by the species question. 
Away back in the year 1848 there was no great dearth of 
manuals of descpritive botany for. the northern United States. 
Amos Eaton's Manual had gone through eight editions, and 
Wood's Class Book has appeared in a tenth edition. In this year 
there came forth a new Manual of Botany of the Northern United 
