THE NATURE OF SPECIES
- Poulton, E. B. President’s Address. “What is a Species?” Trans. Entom. Soc. London, pp. lxxvii–cxvi. 1903.
- Rowe, A. W. An Analysis of the Genus Micraster, as Determined by Rigid Zonal Collecting from the Zone of Rhynconella cuvieri to that of Micraster cor-anguinum. Quart. Jour. Geol. Soc, Vol. LV, pp. 494–547, pi. 35–39.
- Spencer, Herbert. The Development Hypothesis. Reprinted in Essays—Scientific, Political, and Speculative, I, 1868, 1854.
- The Conception of Species. A discussion at the British Association, Oxford, 1926. Rep. Brit. Assoc, 1926, pp. 356–357.
“All students were so impressed with the belief in the reality and permanence of species that endless labour was bestowed on the attempt to distinguish them—a task whose hopelessness may be inferred from the fact that even in the well-known British flora one authority describes sixty-two species of brambles and roses and another of equal eminence only two species of the same group.”—A. R. Wallace.
“A species is supposed to be a group of individuals that closely resemble one another owing to their descent from common ancestors—a group that has become more or less sharply separated from all other coexisting species by the disappearance of intermediate forms.” “The more we study the animal and vegetable kingdoms . . . the more clearly is the fact impressed upon us that if we could have before us all past and present individuals we should find it impossible, except in an arbitrary manner, to arrange them in species at all, for each kind would be found to be connected with others by series of small gradations.”—Arthur Dendy, Outlines of Evolutionary Biology.
“The question what constitutes a species must be left to the judgment or fancy of the individual.”—H. S. Jennings.
Modern students of nature do not find, as Linnaeus stated about two hundred and fifty years ago: “There are as many different species of animals and plants on earth as there were different forms created in the beginning.”
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