net i % avw 
The Ohio 
i^Caturalist, 
c-ltilR AK' 
NEW Y0R1 i 
PUBLISHED BY 
The Biological Club of the Ohio State University. 
Volume XI. MARCH, 1911. 
80TANICAI 
GARDEN 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
Schaffner— The Classification of Plants. VI 289 
Fulton— The Stratiomyidae of Cedar Point, Sandusky 299 
Hine — A New Species of Nothomyia 301 
Griggs — An Ohio Station for Phacelia dubia 303 
Griggs — Eupatorium aromaticum in Ohio 304 
THE CLASSIFICATION OF PLANTS, VI.* 
John H. Schaffner. 
In a previous paper of this series, the writer defined the classes 
of plantsf and also divided the Monocotyls and Dicotyls into ten 
subclasses. In the arrangement given only a moderate departure 
was made from the Engler and Prantl scheme, although it was 
recognized that present morphological knowledge would warrant 
greater changes. Having become accustomed to thinking along 
phyletic lines of classification in the meantime, through rather 
extensive investigations, the writer is now prepared to take a 
more radical position in the direction of a rational system. The 
time has come when present accepted facts and theories of mor- 
phology and evolutionary doctrines should be reflected in plant 
classification. Bessey’s “A Synopsis of Plant Phyla” published 
in 1907 is a most important contribution to the subject of tax- 
onomy and can readily be taken as a basis for further studies. 
Some of the groupings given below have been taken from the 
“Synopsis,” while a considerable part had been worked out inde- 
pendently before a copy of that work was received. It was. 
therefore, a source of considerable satisfaction to find that the 
writer’s own results were essentially the same as Bessey’s. For if 
one breaks away from past “authority,” the application of modern 
ideas to the problem of relationships should lead to more or less 
definite results. In so far as they represent essentially similar 
groups, the names adopted by Bessey have also been applied to 
the present classification; for the “name of a group is only a name 
and not a definition.” The names not agreeing with Bessey’s 
* Contribution from the Botanical Laboratory of Ohio State University ,60. 
t The Classification of Plants, IV. Ohio Nat. 9 : 446-455, 1909. 
289 
