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Show IV. SPECIES AS TO V .ARI.ATION, GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION, AND SUCCESSION. (.AMERIOAN JoURNAL OF SomNOE AND ARTS, May, 1863.) Etude su'l' l' Espece, d l' Occasion d'une Revision de la Famille des Oup~bliferes,par M. ALPHONSE DE CANDOLLE.- This is the title of a paper by M. Alph. De Candolle, growing out of his study of the oaks. It was published in the November number of the Bioliotheque Universelle, and separately issued as a pamphlet. A less inspiring task could hardly be assigned to a botanist than the systematic elaboration of the genus Quercus and its allies. The vast materials assembled under De Candolle's hands, willie disheartening for their bulk, offered small hope of novelty. The subject was both extremely trite and extremely difficult. Happily it occurred to De Candolle that an interest might be imparted to an onerous undertaking, and a work of necessity be turned to good account for science, by studying the oaks in view of the question of species. What this term species means, or should mean, in natural history what the limits of species, inter se or chronologically,' or in geographical distribution, t h en. · modifications, actual or probable, their origin, and SPECIES AS TO VARIA110N, ETC. 1'79 their destiny-these are questions which surge up from time to time ; and now and then in the progress of science they come to assume a new and hopeful interest. Botany and zoology, geology, and what our author, feeling the want of a new term, proposes to name epiontology/ all lead up to and converge into this class of questions, while recent theories shape and point the discussion. So we look with eager interest to see what light the study of oaks by a very careful, experienced, and conservative botanist, particularly conversant with the geographical relations of plants, may throw upon the subject. The course of investigation in this instance does not differ from that ordinarily pursued by working botanists; nor, indeed, are the theoretical conclusions other than those to which a similar study of other orders might not have equally led. The oaks afford a very good occasion for the discussion of questions which press upon our attention, and perhaps they offer peculiarly good materials on acc01mt of the number of fossil species . . Preconceived notions about species being laid aside, the specimens in hand were distributed accord- ' ' 1 ..A. name which, at the close of his article, De Candolle proposes for the study of the succession of organized beings, to comprehend, therefore, palreontology and all included under what is called geographical botany and zoology_;_the whole forming a science parallel to geology-the latter devoted to the history of unorganized bodies, the former, to that of organized beings, as respects origin, distribution, and succession. We are not satisfied with the word, notwithstanding the precedent of palmontology; since ontology, the science of being, has an established meaning as referring to mental existence-i. e., is a synonym or a department of metaphysics. |