320 The American Naturalist. [April, 
that whilst all biologists now agree in defining a species upon 
its tangible and present characters, many of them nevertheless 
act upon the old notion that a species must have its origin 
somewhere beyond the domain of exact history. 
This notion that a species, to be a species, must have origi- 
nated in nature’s garden and not in man’s, has been left over 
to us from the last generation—it is the inheritance of an ac- 
quired character. John Ray, towards the close of the seven- 
teenth century, appears to have been the first to use the word 
species in its technical natural history sense, and the matter 
of origin was an important factor in his conception of what a 
species is. Linneus’ phrase is familiar: “ We reckon as many 
species as there were forms created in ‘the beginning.” Dar- 
win elaborated the new conception—that a species is simply a 
congregation of individuals which are more like each other 
than they are like any other congregation—and with a freedom 
from prejudice which is rarely attained even by his most de- 
voted adherents, he declared that “ one new variety raised by 
man will be a more important and interesting subject for 
study, than one more species added to the infinitude of already 
recorded species.” The old naturalists threw the origin of the 
species back beyond known causes; Darwin endeavored to 
discover the “ Origin of Species,” and it is significant that he set 
out without giving any definition of what a species is. I have 
said this much for the purpose of showing that it is important, 
when we demand that a new species be created as a proof of 
evolution, that we are ourselves open to the conviction that 
the thing can be done. 
I have said that no modern naturalist would define a spe- 
cies in such terms that some horticultural types could be ex- 
cluded, even if he desired that they should be omitted. 
-Haeckel’s excellent definition admits many of them. In his 
view, the word species “serves as the common designation of 
all individual animals or plants, which are equal in all essen- 
tial matters of form, and are only distinguished by quite sub- 
ordinate characters.” It is impossible, however, to actually 
determine if one has a species in hand by applying a defini- 
tion, One must show that his new type—if it is a plant—has 
