280 The American Naturalist. [Aprils 
know the need of a reform, one must know how to bring such 
a reform about. If the method of reformation, or of rearrange- 
ment is hard to discover in those matters in which the factors 
are well-known and can be carefully weighed, how much more 
difficult is it where phylogeny with its undiscovered and un- 
discoverable quantities complicates. May we not, then, be 
pardoned if we consider Reinke’s criticism of Von Tavel’s 
endeavor to distribute the lichens as essentially puerile, and of 
negative weight in serious discussion ? 
“Taxonomy should, moreover, follow practical lines.” It 
has been generally supposed that the constant endeavor of 
taxonomy during the past century has been to rid itself of the 
burden of practicality. If, as Reinke suggests, attempts to dis- 
cover the phylogeny of any plant-group must always be un- 
- fruitful to a great extent, then a practical system, not a theore- 
tical one, is a desideratum. If this is true, it is both remark- 
able and unfortunate that the best botanical effort of decades 
past has been directed to the replacement of artificial systems 
by natural ones, and to the improvement of the latter. Asa 
matter of fact, such is not true. Taxonomy is, ultimately, 
never a means, but an end, and the demands of practicality in 
a system are entirely without force, until those are fully met 
which are entailed by the departments of botany that true 
taxonomy should summarize. Thus, the rapidity with which 
a system may be leaved over, is no index of its value. In fact, 
natural systems are necessarily complicated, and great con- 
venience and “usability” in any system are in themselves 
suspicious. Reinke laments the fact that the lichens have dis- 
appeared so suddenly from a prominent place in texts, that it 
often involves trouble to find them in “anhinge” to different 
fungus-groups. Likewise, it would require less manual labor 
if the lower cryptogams were still grouped as alge and fungi, 
and, from the same point of view, it is a great bother to follow 
an apetalous family into some obscure nook among the Chori- 
petale. Yet there are those who prefer an expression of prob- 
able phylogenetic relationship in a system to mere utility, and, 
who, unlike Reinke, have no “ misgivings as to the fitness of 
arranging a great plant-group, so rich in forms and numbers 
