439 



THE STEUGGLE FOB TAXOHOMXC BEEIHITENESS. 



1. The Ideal of the Type. 



On 5th December, 1917, instead of formally reading my paper, " Notes on 

 Eucalypts (with description of a new species), No. V," I obtained permission of the 

 President of the Eoyal Society of New South Wales (Dr. J. B. Cleland) to offer certain 

 observations on species, of which following is an abstract : — 



'' Last winter a friend with chemical leanings said to me, ' I do not understand 

 this talk about species.' I replied that I could sympathise with him, for chemistry 

 is a fundamentally different subject to what it was when I studied it as a young 

 man. . . . An outstanding ' fact ' in natural history is the type, and the ascertain- 

 ment of this is a function of the naturalist. It is not that of the chemist. 



" It would not be easy to exaggerate the importance of definiteness in regard 

 to the type. Personally. I have shown the strength of my faith, by the way in which 

 I have spent freely of my limited financial resources with the view of seeing or procuring 

 types, and have given up my leave over and over again with the same object. I may 

 point out that Mr. Charles Hedley has been engaged in analogous work in the domain 

 of eonchology, and it would not have been possible for him to enunciate some of his 

 philosophical generabsations concerning affinities and migration unless, by his researches 

 he could plant his feet firmly on the rock of the type. And with another passing 

 reference to the work of those who regularly attend our meetings, may I point out, Sir, 

 the drudgery that you and Mr. Cheel have found it necessary to undertake in regard 

 to the types of fungi, so necessary for your researches into life-histories. 



" In many cases ascertainment of the type is still open to proof, and sometimes, 

 in search of it, we go up one lane and down another, and finally, maybe, we find that we 

 are on the wrong track. But we may make a direct contribution to human knowledge 

 by showing that we have gone on the wrong track, provided we record details of our 

 pilgrimage. It will be a warning to others not to proceed in that direction. The fact 

 that botanists sometimes follow wrong clues does not necessarily show that their 

 methods were wrong, but that they are fallible human beings with some of the defects 

 of the human intellect. 



" A man who takes the risk of guessing at the type may build on a shifting 

 foundation ; he must at times be uneasy because he knows that the true type may be 

 found, and much of the superstructure and inference he has built may have to be 

 remodelled. In such a case the brave man is he who faces the facts, who says, Truth 

 is eternal, that nothing matters but the truth ! So that a man may be judged by his 

 recantations, if any, and certainly the bravery of holding an impossible position, 

 although a glorious thing in the poetry of war, has no analogy in science. Recantation 



