Page:Transactions of the Linnean Society of London, Volume 12.djvu/281

Rh into one species, with this sweeping remark, "Limites inter species non reperi, hinc conjunxi." Retzius, his pupil, the first who questioned the correctness of this opinion, makes the following just observation thirty years afterwards: "Genus Pæoniæ nimis contraxit illus. a Linné, character specierum utique difficilis non tamen impossibilis. Si Pæonia anomala pro distincta haberi debet specie, non video cur ni etiam reliquæ, nec mihi persuadere potui omnes ab una productas fuisse. Si vero quis aliter sentiat, per me licebit; tunc vero binæ tantum statui debent Pæoniæ species, Officinalis nempe et Tenuifolia. Memoratas species sapius e seminibus educavi semper sibi similes." The truth of this is confirmed by all our experience; for the seedling plants preserve uniformly, as far as we have observed, the habits and characters of their parents, But there is great difficulty in discovering sufficient marks of distinction between them; which, however, we ought not to presume in any case to be insurmountable, though we may have failed in overcoming it in some instances.

Linné admits the newly-discovered P. tenuifolia into his second edition of the Species Plantarum, and P. anomala is described as a new species in his Mantissa; but he persists in considering the old male Pæony only as a variety of the female, though they are distinguished by characters fully as opposite as those by which the two former species are distinguished from either; nor does he ever acknowledge any of those with pubescent leaves to be distinct species, although several of those found in the old authors are unquestionably genuine. But even the error of this great man has on the present occasion proved beneficial to science, by repressing that prevailing propensity among botanists to increase too much the number of species: for no writer has since presumed to take up any of those rejected by him, without mature consideration and well-grounded proof.

Retzius, Pallas, and Murray are the principal botanists who Rh