and still other fields less particularly concerned with the problem; and it is with this appreciation of the magnitude of the whole species problem that we hold a brief for the taxonomic method as fundamental to the elucidation of certain aspects of the subject.
I take it that the essential function of the taxonomic method is this interpretation of biologic phenomena by the comparison of related species. Whenever taxonomists increase their data (individuals studied) to a volume comparable with that on which the best research in other fields has been based, pursue their comparisons of related species as persistently as the geneticists have compared related generations of individuals, and strive towards interpretations of their data which shall be coördinated with the findings from other fields of biology, we shall have a taxonomic science that cannot fail to command the respect of students. If taxonomy has been in ill repute, it is because we have considered as our chief function the solution of something other than biologic problems. Too many systematists attain their objectives when each species is "represented" by a half-dozen specimens pinned in their cabinets. These are the systematists responsible for the definition of systematic entomology as the science of transferring pins from one box to another. If taxonomists have too often made species-descriptions and catalogs and nomenclatorial inanities the end of their efforts, it is no proof that the science cannot rise above its technic and concern itself with biologic problems. As my good friend has remarked, our difference is not with taxonomy but with taxonomists.
It is, then, as something of a defense that I detail the several items of the taxonomic method and give a specific accounting of the basis for the present analyses of species in the genus Cynips.
I should detail the taxonomic method in the following items:
1. The validation of data and conclusions by the utilization of large series of individuals of each species.
2. The utilization of series from wide-spread localities fairly representative of the range of each species.
3. The utilization of such material for every one of the species constituting the natural group under investigation.
4. The recognition of relationships between individuals and species by the consideration of every character which may be shown to have hereditary significance, to wit: morphologic structures of any and every