852 Recent Progress and present State of Systematic Botany. 
o new species should be first published in this ‘Synopsis.’ 
Nothing has tended more to produce confusion in systematic 
detailed parts of its affinities, &. However carefully the 
diagnosis may be worded so as to distinguish the species ‘from 
those previously published it would be insufficient for its iden- 
tification, and fori descriptions would be inadmissible from the 
plan of the w t the same time, it is to be expected that 
the author, in _prepating the ‘ Synopsis,’ should meet with new 
forms, which he y be desirous to make known, in order to 
render his work as i onin plete: as agents But his course should 
nzan sense, which, though not susceptible of a strict definition, 
is nase generally understood amongst ciara: oe they 
may designate it as a true e species, a Linn or a com- 
tech species. The ‘Synopsis’ might also distingraist marked 
rieties whose admission or rejection as — might be 
pipouetble and a more partial one eeairaratety useless. The 
enumeration and distinction of the various forms of Brassica 
campestris and oleracea, of Pisum sativum, Viola tricolor, &e., may 
be serviceable to the agriculturist or gardener, that of the forms 
of Rubus fruticosus may be interesting to the investigator of the 
flora of a limited district, but they are only useless encum- 
brances to the general systematist as well as to the naturalist i in 
other branches ‘who would have to a use of the ‘Synopsis ; 
and the names and diagnoses of two hundred forms of 
verna would be a simple nuisance, of no use whatever to any 
. 
“The mode of dealing with species which, in the present state of vegetation, 
Sine into each other through a series of intermediate forms which cannot t fairly be 
ed to be hy ll di d by Nigeli in a series of papers in the “ Sit- 
zungsberichte ” of the Minish soon sg for 1866, the result of careful observation 
chiefly of the genus Hier After adm iting himself to to have been originally a 
firm believer in the fixity of ep of species and a strong advocate +35 the hybrid parentage 
of the large number of intermediate forms observed, he ac a his conver- 
sion to the doctrine of evolution. ‘In the present state oy tha aot sees 
“no other possibility than the assumption that the species of have 
