ARE SPECIES REALITIES OR CONCEPTS ONLY? 1 



PROFESSOR J. H. POWERS 

 University of Nebraska 



Ix the American Naturalist for April, 1908, there ap- 

 peared the reprint of some remarkable papers, consti- 

 tuting a symposium by the greater botanists of the 

 country on "Some Aspects of the Species Question." 



The attitudes taken toward questions of the nature and 

 reality of species were, on the whole, tentative and ques- 

 tioning. But the opening paper presents, with the utmost 

 lucidity and startling positiveness, a definite conception 

 as to the nature of species : ' ' Species have no actual ex- 

 istence .in nature." They are not realities. Individuals 

 alone are real. Species are concepts only, concepts 

 framed by the human mind, and arbitrarily framed 

 withal, for no better reason than its own convenience. 

 Species are compared to spoons, made to fit the human 

 mouth, or the mouth of Linnams ; and until it can be dem- 

 onstrated—so runs the argument— that this organ has 

 departed appreciably from the typical oral aperture of 

 the great Swede, so long must we continue to fashion our 

 species-spoon-concepts to the exact dimensions of his 

 model. 



Now these views, although not wholly new, were a sur- 

 prise to the writer, both in themselves, in the extremity 

 of their statement and still more in the high authority by 

 which they were supported. Do such things still happen 

 in the botanical world? he queried. Surely no zoologist 

 would for a moment, etc. But hold! "Another Aspect 

 of the Species Question," 2 by a zoologist this time, and 

 containing the duplicate assertion that many zoologists, 

 ''long since reached a satisfactory solution of the species 



1 Studies from the Zoological Laboratory of the University of Nebraska, 

 No. 95. 



598 



