Among the workers in botany and in every department of
zooelogy there have always been the "splitters" and the "lumpers," as
they are familiarly called; the former insisting on the most minute
distinctions between their "species," thus multiplying them; the latter
being more liberal and tending to diminish the number of species in any
given group. For a generation or more in the recent past the "splitters"
had things pretty much their own way; but of late there is a growing
tendency to frown down the mania for creating new names. Even yet it is
with the utmost reluctance that long established specific distinctions
are surrendered, as is illustrated in the case of the mammoth, which is
acknowledged by some of the very best authorities to be really
indistinguishable from the modern Asiatic elephant. Several fossil bears
were long listed in scientific books; but they are all acknowledged now
to be identical with the modern grizzly, and as we have already
intimated all the modern ones ought to be put together. These modern
rationalizing methods have made but a slight impression on the vast
complex of the fossil plants and animals, affecting the names of only a
few of the larger and better known forms. In the realm of invertebrate
palaeontology, however, the "splitters" are still holding high carnival,
in spite of the efforts of some very prominent scientists in the
opposite direction.
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