391 



Following is an extract from a paper I read before the British Association for 

 the Advancement of Science at its Australasian meeting, August, 1914 : — ■ 



A species must be judged as a whole. 'Species may be compared to stones of various sizes and 

 facets. They may lack uniformity, but we are conscious of a general similarity. Each stone is looked 

 upon in its wholeness as a gem ; the individual characters, colour, size of facet, &c, are of relatively less 

 importance. This idea of judging a thing as a whole, with the amplest information available concerning 

 it, is not peculiar to the species concept. It is applied to other forms of thought, and in proportion as the 

 botanist grasps it, he becomes a broader-minded man. 



Let us take an illustration from the science of history. In March last Lord Haldane, in lecturing 

 on ' The Meaning of Truth in History/ said, " The historian surely must resemble the portrait-painter 

 rather than the photographer. The historian who had a whole period to describe must be more than exact ; 

 he had to be a lord over his details. He must marshal those details and tower above them and reject and 

 select in the light of nothing less than the whole.' His chairman, Sir Edward Grey, added, ' I am sure that 

 a mere accumulation of facts and records without interpretation can as little give a true impression of the 

 life, the spirit, the work, and the thought of a past age, as a drawerful of dried and unmounted skins can 

 give an impression of the life of the birds in the air, on the earth, or in the water.' " 



We pass to an illustration from the domain of criticism. In Professor G-erthwohl's recent essay on 

 Edward Dowden (Fortnightly Review, June, 1914, p. 1012), we have the same point of view : — 



. . . if he had once understood an author ... it was a never-ending joy to return at 

 intervals to live with him . . . after a period of intimacy with his author, and still impregnated with 

 that author's sweet fragrance, Dowden . . . dismissing details, surveyed him in his broader structure, 

 in his elevated masses of truth, before setting him forth as an organic whole, artistically reconstructed by 

 the twofold process of conjectural psychology and document." 



Consider for a moment a homely comparison taken from industrial legislation. In Australia, with 

 our detailed laws and regulations on the subject, we are frequently confronted with such problems as lie 

 before the Boiler Makers, Shipwrights, and Engineers' Demarcation Board, which has to solve problems of 

 overlapping, and endeavour to empirically preserve the integrity of each trade. And so through the gamut 

 of human affairs the outstanding lesson we have to learn is to view subjects from as many aspects as possible. 



What does all this lead to ? To the fact that the conception of a species is based on empiricism, and 

 that therefore we must rely upon human judgment in apportionment of a sufficient amount of variation to 

 constitute a species. And in all cases in which we rely upon human judgment we have the potentiality of 

 human error. Although endless fun can be poked at the illogical positions in which we sometimes find 

 ourselves by our conception of species, it is idle to attempt to abandon them, for plants will be labelled 

 species on the evidence of our senses to the end of time. 



"... Species which are concepts, as I take it, for our convenience in discussing the various 

 questions pertaining to plants, should be distinguished by sufficient morphological characters, the dis- 

 tinctions, based upon phvsiological differences having subspecific rank. What constitute sufficient morpho- 

 logical characters must be left to the individual judgment." (Prof. J. C. Arthur, Symposium at the 

 Fourteenth Annual Meeting of the Botanic Society of America, p. 248, 1908)." 



Prof. Arthur used as illustration three rusts which will each only grow on Aster, Solidago, or Erigeron . 

 but which otherwise appear to be identical; it appears to be question of nutrition. He looks upon the 

 ru3ts a3 identical species, although some others hold a different opinion. (Arthur, op. cit., p. 245.) 



" The more thoroughly and accurately, however, it (taxonomic practice) takes into account the total 

 sum of the attributes, qualities and capacities of the plant, the greater will be the value of its conclusions, 

 and the greater will be the service it may render to co-ordinate branches of botanical science." (Dr. D. T. 

 Macdougal, op. cit., p. 252.) 



As the concept of species does not appear to be as clearly understood in 

 Australia as it should be, I will refer to the subject in a subsequent Part. 



