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The German systematist, A.W. Eichler, attempted to remove this disadvantage which since the time of Jussieu had characterized the French system, and in 1883 grouped the Dicotyledons in two subclasses. The earlier Choripetalae embraces the Polypetalae and Monochlamydae of the French systems.
We know now that in so far as life and living matter can be investigated by science, animals and plants cannot be described as being alive in different degrees. The actual boundaries between animals and plants are artificial; they are rather due to the ingenious analysis of the systematist than actually resident in objective nature.
The systematist who studies only dried corpses will soon be out of date." Now all this is not given to intimate that there is no scientific justification for the term "species," but to make plain to my non-professional readers what every well-informed biologist already knows, namely, that at the present time the "species question" is still in a very unsatisfactory state.
Hagen's "Synopsis of the Neuroptera of North America," published by the Smithsonian Institution. This group is a most interesting one to the systematist, as it is composed of so many heterogeneous forms which it is almost impossible to classify in our rigid and at present necessarily artificial systems.
I have been charged with unnecessarily making fun of ornithological nomenclature. As a matter of fact, I have dealt far too leniently with the peccadillos of the ornithological systematist. Recently a book was published in the United States entitled The Birds of Illinois and Wisconsin.
These differences blend into each other in an insensible series; and a series impresses the mind with the idea of an actual passage. Hence I look at individual differences, though of small interest to the systematist, as of high importance for us, as being the first step towards such slight varieties as are barely thought worth recording in works on natural history.
Their teeth were wonderfully intricate and seemed adapted for some very special diet, although beetles seemed to satisfy those which I caught. For once, the systematist had labeled them opportunely, and we never called them anything but Furipterus horrens.
We are not convinced of this Often where it has appeared to be so, advancing discovery has brought intermediate forms to light, perplexing to the systematist. "They are mistaken, we think more than one systematic botanist will say, "who repeat that the greater part of our natural orders and tribes are absolutely limited," however we may agree that we will limit them.
Genera and species are, at the present time, for a large part artificial, or stated more correctly, conventional groups. Every systematist is free to delimit them in a wider or in a narrower sense, according to his judgment. The greater authorities have as a rule preferred larger genera, others of late have elevated innumerable subgenera to the rank of genera.
There is another dull beast which, from the point of view of the mere systematist, seems as far removed from those that wear hoofs as it could be, but the philosopher, considering the point at which it has arrived, rather than the route by which it got there, will class it with them, for its idea of life is just theirs turned topsy-turvy.
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