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Updated: May 4, 2025
Up to this time the true significance of the luxuriance and diversity of larval forms had never seriously engaged the attention of systematists in entomology.
Hence we see that modifications of structure, viewed by systematists as of high value, may be wholly due to unknown laws of correlated growth, and without being, as far as we can see, of the slightest service to the species.
Systematists will be able to pursue their labours as at present; but they will not be incessantly haunted by the shadowy doubt whether this or that form be in essence a species. This I feel sure, and I speak after experience, will be no slight relief. The endless disputes whether or not some fifty species of British brambles are true species will cease.
Many species of ferns afford instances of this rule, and Lindley and other great systematists have frequently been puzzled by the wide range of differences between the individuals of a single species.
Hence we see that modifications of structure, viewed by systematists as of high value, may be wholly due to unknown laws of correlated growth, and without being, as far as we can see, of the slightest service to the species.
Notwithstanding all this, there is such a similarity in the appearance and habits of the different species, that I think the systematists have improved but little, if anything, upon the simple arrangement of the true naturalist Wilson, who poor Scotch emigre as he was, with an empty purse and a loaded gun has collected more original information about the birds of America than all that have followed him.
Finally, as rudimentary organs, by whatever steps they may have been degraded into their present useless condition, are the record of a former state of things, and have been retained solely through the power of inheritance we can understand, on the genealogical view of classification, how it is that systematists, in placing organisms in their proper places in the natural system, have often found rudimentary parts as useful as, or even sometimes more useful than, parts of high physiological importance.
Indeed, they seem to be of the same genus, and so Linnaeus classed them; but later systematists have separated them, for the purpose, I should fancy, not of simplifying science, but of creating the impression that they themselves were very profound observers.
In these days the most eminent botanists are not ashamed to compare notes with the insects, since it turns out that these bits of animate wisdom long ago anticipated some of the latest improvements of our modern systematists.
Between these two alternatives, many writers have tried to decide, by transplanting their specimens after some time in the garden, into arid or sandy soil, in order to see whether they would resume their alpine character. Among the systematists who tested plants in this way, Nageli especially, directed his attention to the hawkweeds or Hieracium.
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