426 LUSSONS WITS PLANTS 



are merely incidental variations of them. So those 

 kinds which an author thought to be the originally- 

 created things were called the species, and the 

 lesser kinds were called varieties. 



547. It was soon apparent, however, that 

 authors differed widely as to what were species and 

 what varieties. The species of one writer became 

 the varieties of another. The very fact that the 

 kinds varied so widely that they could not be 

 uniformly named, is evidence that they are not 

 real and original things in the creation, but are the 

 outcomes or results of modification. As a matter 

 of practice, while authors define species to be enti- 

 ties in the creation, they apply names and descrip- 

 tions to forms because they are distinct enough to 

 be easily recognized, without enquiring as to whether 

 these forms answer a definition or not. In other 

 words, species have always been regarded, in prac- 

 tice, merely as assemblages of similar individuals. 



548. We now believe that plants have been 

 changing throughout all time, and that some kinds 

 have been widely separated and are distinct (that 

 is, not connected to others by intermediate forms), 

 and that others are not yet clearly differentiated 

 from their kin. In other words, species are results 

 of evolution, not original parts of the creation ; and 

 just what degree of difference shall constitute a 

 species is a matter of individual judgment. Species 



