No. 501] 



THE SPECIES QUESTION 



593 



are fixed and immutable, others that yield readily to the 

 forces of environment. That so-called species originate 

 by different methods is evident, thanks largely to modern 

 botanical research. The whole outcome of this sym- 

 posium, as it affects nomenclature, is naturally indecisive, 

 but contributes a few reasonable suggestions for its im- 

 provement. It is, however, a brilliant expose of conflict- 

 ing interests and conceptions. 



The state of unrest, and the dissatisfaction with the 

 status quo here disclosed, are not confined to the ranks 

 of the botanists; the evils here arraigned have long 

 agitated zoologists as well. But the organisms botanists 

 have to deal with are so different from animals, at least 

 the higher forms of animal life, in methods of repro- 

 duction, manner of growth, and response to environment, 

 that the species problem in botany is a far more complex 

 question to deal with than it is, for example, in the higher 

 vertebrates, with which alone the writer claims famil- 

 iarity. 



Where to leave off naming * ' forms" is, after all, the 

 main point at issue, and the next, how best to express 

 their relationships as regards origin and degree of 

 affinity. Utility should be, of course, the criterion in both 

 cases, but especially in the former. How to designate the 

 minor forms, and to what extent they may be profitably 

 provided with names are questions that agitated zoolo- 

 gists apparently long before they became serious prob- 

 lems with botanists. Zoologists, certain of them at least, 

 long since reached what seemed to them a satisfactory 

 solution of the species question by recognition of the fact 

 that "species," like genera and the higher groups, have 

 no real existence, but are merely man-made concepts, 

 purely arbitrary and conventional, devised for conveni- 

 ence in recording our knowledge of organic nature. More 

 than thirty years ago this concept found practical recog- 

 nition among American ornithologists and mammalogists, 

 and from this hotbed of heterodoxy the infection rapidly 

 spread until this point of view became the working basis 



