THE TAXOXOMIC ASPECT OF THE SPECIES 

 QUESTION 



PROFESSOR CHARLES E. BESSEY 

 The University of Nebraska 



As long as species were supposed to be actual things, 

 "created as separate kinds at the beginning," that botan- 

 ists "discovered," as explorers discover islands in the 

 ocean, there was no serious "species question." A 

 botanist might make a mistake, and announce the dis- 

 covery of a new species, when he had merely found a 

 variety of an old species; as an explorer might mis- 

 takenly announce the discovery of a new island, when 

 as a matter of fact he had only seen an unfamiliar coast 

 of a long-known island. 



Xature produces individuals, and nothing more. She 

 produces them in such countless numbers that we are 

 compelled to sort them into kinds in order that we may 

 be able to carry them in our minds. This sorting is 

 classification— taxonomy. But right here we are in dan- 

 ger of misunderstanding the matter. We do not actually 

 sort out our individuals. We imagine them sorted out. 

 It is only to a very slight extent that the systematic 

 botanist ever actually sorts out individuals. When he 

 has a considerable number of individual dried plants in 

 his herbarium, he may sort them out, but these are but 

 an infinitesimal portion of all the individuals in the world 

 that we imagine to be sorted, but that are actually un- 

 sorted. 



So species have no actual existence in nature. They 

 are mental concepts, and nothing more. They are con- 

 ceived in order to save ourselves the labor of thinking 

 in terms of individuals, and they must be so framed 

 that they do save us labor. If they do not, they fail of 

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