SOME PROBLEMS OF TAXONOMY 
A. W. Lindsey 
During the past the pronounced tendency of systematists to 
do little more than describe and name different species of plants 
and animals was a prevalent and largely necessary evil. Even 
so, the work of taxonomists was indispensable in the biological 
sciences, and now that it is no longer without adequate founda- 
tions, it can be of inestimable value. Its value, of course, must 
depend to a high degree upon its usefulness to other branches 
of science, but if we except the field of medicine, none of the 
other branches have great intrinsic worth. 
During the last thirty or forty years the classification of ani- 
mals has been placed upon a sound phylogenetic basis which 
renders the work of a thorough systematist of the present day of 
much greater importance than the mere description and naming ^ 
of species. Account must now be taken of the morphology, ecol- 
ogy and physiology of organistns, of paleontology where it serves, 
and possibly of genetics. The discoveries of geneticists, so far, 
appeal to the writer as incapable of wide application to the 
problems of taxonomy, although they may easily furnish many 
checks on the relationships of species and their subdivisions. The 
modern systematist must be well grounded in all branches of 
biology, and his work, in order to be reasonably accurate and 
useful, must express the deductions of such training. 
The dignity of taxonomy as it should be, then, is scarcely to 
be denied, but it is all too true that many taxonomic works of the 
present afford more than one opening for criticism. As a syste- 
matic entomologist and a devotee of the Order Lepidoptera, the 
writer has noted with many misgivings certain phases of this 
matter which it is his purpose to discuss in this paper. Most im- 
portant of these is the limitation of systematic divisions below 
the genus, including the questionable practice of naming slight 
variations. Closely related to this topic are the conflicting meth- 
ods of naming such divisions, and last of all, one of the most 
vexatious Questions in the classification of animals is that of the 
stabilization of generic names. 
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