436 



Referring to Australian Desmidiacese, the late Mr. G. I. Playfair wrote to me — 



" I find the polymorphism so widespreading and intricate in these aquatic organisms that to a large 

 extent I have had to give up the attempt to arrange the nomenclature on a true biological basis, and have 

 returned to conventional species as far as the nomenclature goes." 



See also the remarks of Dr. B. L. Robinson, under " Inequality of Species Values " 

 at p. 434. 



I have already quoted Irving Bailey (Part LIV, p. 196) as showing that 

 anatomical study of timbers breaks down as regards classification. In his " First and 

 Last Things,"' H. G. Wells gives a presentation of this and cognate matters, in his usual 

 lucid way : — 



" A mind nourished on anatomical study is, of course, permeated with the suggestion of the vagueness 

 and instability of biological species. A biological species is quite obviously a great number of unique 

 individuals which is separable from other biological species only by the fact that an enormous number 

 of other linking individuals are inaccessible in time (are in other words, dead and gone), and each new 

 individual in that species does, in the distinction of its own individuality, break away in however infinitesimal 

 degree from the previous average properties of any species, even the properties that constitute the specific 

 definition, that is not a matter of more or less. (p. 14.) 



". . . And this is true not only of biological species. It is true of the mineral specimens con- 

 stituting a mineral species, and I reme mber as a constant refrain in the lectures of Professor Judd upon 

 rock classification, the words ' they pass into one another by insensible gradations.' It is true, I hold, 

 of all things, (p. 15.) 



" . . • It is true you can make your net of logical interpretation finer and finer, and you can 

 fine your classification more and more — up to a certain limit. But essentially you are working in limits 

 and as you come closer, as you look at finer and subtler things, as you leave the practical purpose for which 

 the method exists, the element of error increases. Every species is vague, every term goes cloudy at its 

 edges ; and so in my way of thinking, relentless logic is only another name for a stupidity, for a sort of 

 intellectual pig-headedness. If you push a philosophical or metaphysical inquiry through a series of valid 

 syllogisms (never committing any generally recognised fallacy), you nevertheless leave behind you at each 

 step a certain rubbing and marginal loss of objective truth, and you get deflections that are difficult to 

 trace at each phase in the process. Every species waggles about in its definition, every tool is a little loose 

 in its handle, every scale has its individual error, (p. 18.) 



" . . . There is a growing body of people which is beginning to hold the converse view — that 

 counting, classification, measurement, the whole fabric of mathematics, is subjective and untrue to the 

 world of fact, and that the uniqueness of individuals is the objective truth. As the number of units taken 

 diminishes, the amount of variety and inexactness of generalisation increases, because individuality tells 

 for more and more. Could you take men by the thousand billion, you could generalise about them as you 

 do about atoms ; could you take atoms singly, it may be you would find them as individual as your aunts 

 and cousins. That concisely is the minority belief, and my belief/' (p. 34.) 



5. Jordan's Species. 



" Let us take as an example the numerous forms of Linnaeus's species, Draba (Erophila) verna 

 studied by Jordan (1873). ... He distinguished more than 200 forms (an extreme case, J.H.M.), 

 each of which preserved its own special characters for many generations with complete constancy. There 

 can be no doubt that more extended investigations would have resulted in the discovery of an even greater 

 number of forms, distinguished by minuter differences, so that, in short, there would appear to be no limits 

 to species-niongering." (Jost's ' ; Plant Physiology,"' Gibson's Trans., p. 385.) 



