APPLICATION OF THE QUANTITATIVE METHOD 213 



to discover in the shells and the carapaces numerous unsus- 

 pected peculiarities/ which may afford new, wider means of 

 comparison between fossil and recent species. (See § 148.) 



§ 148.— IMPORTANCE OF MINUTE DETAILS.— The 

 tables of constants given in my paper on Mnium, the tables 

 which are given below (§ 150), and many examples mentioned 

 in the present book, might bring about the impression that I 

 am concerned with unimportant details. 



In Biological Science there are no unimportant subjects. 

 MENDEL and his followers have taken a certain number of 

 simple things or primordia and studied their hereditary trans- 

 mission. They have discovered a new world by the investiga- 

 tion of colours, wrinkles, hairs, prickliness and smoothness of 

 fruits, presence or absence of glands on the leaves, branching 

 or unbranched habit, presence of starch or sugar in the albumen, 

 dimensions (tallness or dwarfness) and other details which are 

 ordinarily considered unimportant. 



The intricate problems of heredity have been brought nearer 

 their solution by dividing them into simple components. 



The most intricate morphological structures consist of a 

 combination of primordia, each primordium being a simple 

 something, a detail. Comparing compound structures, the 

 morphologists try to discover the relations between large groups 

 (orders, classes, families) of living beings, but they are less con- 

 cerned with the relations between smaller groups, such as 

 genera, species, subspecies. Here the relations are simpler, 

 because the differences depend on a smaller number of pri- 

 mordia, but the fundamental morphological laws are the same. 

 In the simple, as well as in the complicated cases, everything 

 depends on the primordia and on the specific energy of each of 

 them. 



We should bear in mind that the best method is to proceed 

 from the simple to the complex. It would be profitable, I 

 think, to pay more attention to the relations between genera, 

 species and subspecies : this would pave the way for the study 

 of more intricate relations. When we apply the quantitative 

 method on systematics, investigating, for instance, a number of 

 primordia in a series of species of Carabus, Mnium or Graminece, 

 we are stud5mig minutiae, it is true, but we may hope to dis- 

 cover general rules which govern the more complex com- 

 binations of primordia. A consequence of our disdain for 

 systematics is that we sometimes attack insoluble problems, 

 putting the cart before the horse. 



In the shells, carapaces, polypiers and other similar objects, 

 we also discern a number of primordia. Here the combinations 



1 See, on the primordia of the shells, p. 1 13. 



