ANOTHER ASPECT OF THE SPECIES QUESTION 



DR. J. A. ALLEN 

 American Museum of Natural History 



The American Naturalist for April last (Vol. XLII, 

 No. 496, pp. 217-281) contains a report of the symposium 

 held by the Botanical Society of America at its recent 

 Chicago meeting on " Aspects of the Species Question." 

 This series of eight papers should be of great interest to 

 zoologists as well as to botanists, since it brings so 

 strongly into relief the differences in view-point held by 

 leading taxonomers in two widely different fields of 

 research. 



The wide divergence of views here shown in relation to 

 the "species concept" is no less surprising than are the 

 measures urged by some of the speakers for the reduction 

 of "taxonomic anarchy" in botany to some degree of 

 reasonableness. The ecologic botanist needs some 

 method of designating the minor variations which are so 

 important to him in his researches, but from his point of 

 view the question "What is a species?" can be decided 

 only by experimental research. In the meantime we may 

 go on naming forms without essential modification of 

 present methods. From another point of view, the nam- 

 ing of new forms is to be repressed with the utmost rigor, 

 even to the establishment of a "taxonomic censorship" 

 upon 1 * species-making. ' J While most of the speakers ap- 

 pear to agree that there are no species in the Linnean 

 sense, and that species are merely mental concepts, like 

 genera and the higher taxonomic groups, there is a 

 tendency to hark back to the Linnean concept, and to 

 accept the Linnean standard as far preferable to the 

 minute discriminations of modern taxonomers. From 

 other points of view there may be physiological species as 

 well as morphological species ; there may be species that 



