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Indiana University Studies 
is no uniformity in current practice, and the only attempts at 
uniformity have been based on purely artificial distinctions. 
The resolution of the terminology must take into account as 
a question of convenience that no category higher than the 
genus may be written into the nomenclature, and as a matter 
of fact that there are often three or four degrees of phylo- 
genetic affinities which may be recognized below what seems 
to be best called a genus. 
The ichthyologists believe that they have the solution in 
calling this lowest category a species and the second category 
a genus, thereby making their order the equivalent of many a 
genus among insects. I interpret the mammalogists to mean 
that they call a Mendelian race a variety, and the fundamental 
taxonomic unit a subspecies, which they imply is an incipient 
“species” (their next category) . The botanists, as nearly as 
I can perceive, call their lowest unit either a variety or a 
species, depending upon its remoteness from the native heath 
of the botanist and his field of experience. 
I am at a loss for a solution of this difficulty. It seems un- 
reasonable to expect that this first category will ever be called 
anything but a species by biologists who are not systematists, 
and in that sense I shall use the word in general discussion 
in this study. It will be impossible to adopt this meaning in 
our system of classification without inventing a new name 
for a category between this and the genus, and I have not the 
temerity to propose such a name while taxonomists are as far 
removed from biologic realities as the codes of nomenclature 
and much current systematics would indicate. Consequently, 
in the systematic portion of this paper I have adopted the 
term variety for the category which, after all, fulfills the 
species concept. I can only plead that I am conscious of the 
inevitable confusion this involves, and desirous of making 
amends as soon as some one proposes a solution — but I shall 
look for a solution that will coordinate biologic concepts of 
species with questions of convenience in systematic botany 
and zoology. 
