Species

194 Species

Lewis Carroll must have been pleased. Romanes then takes Wallace to task for his
denition, and Weismann for his rejection of the inheritance of acquired characters,^13
which Romanes as a “proper” Darwinian had followed Darwin in defending; in fact this
topic was the occasion for the “more Darwinian than Darwin” comment when he coined
the terms “neo-Darwinian” and “ultra-Darwinism.” He distinguished between species
formed through non-hereditary inuence of the environment as somatogenetic species,
and those in which the environment makes changes to hereditable material—the germ
plasm in Weismann’s terms—as blastogenetic species. Neither term survived the rejec-
tion of neo-Lamarckism with the rise of Mendelian genetics at the turn of the century.^14
British entomologist Edward Bagnall Poulton wrote an extensive and inuential essay
on species in which he coined the term syngamy.^15 He noted that the xity of species
was not required by Augustine or Aquinas, and cites Aubrey Moore who ngers Milton
as the guilty party for this doctrine, although he thinks it was due to the spirit of the age
(which, as we have seen, is pretty well right; the received view of the Middle Ages was
non-historical).^16 He also cites Sir William Thistleton-Dyer as claiming that xity was
traceable to Caspar Bauhin and Joachim Jung, and discusses Darwin’s own views in
some detail.^17 He coined several terms to set up the discussion about species, some of
which have entered into common usage.^18 First, he denes groups formed by Linnaean
diagnosis of forms as Syndiagnostic. Then, he names groups that freely interbreed as
Syngamic, and in a privative fashion terms those that do not as Asyngamic (with the sub-
stantive noun forms Syngamy and Asyngamy). Next, he coins the term Epigony to mean
breeding from a common parent. Finally, he provides a term for the organic forms that
live in the same region: Sympatric. Again, he uses a privative term—Asympatric—for
those that do not. Allopatry had to wait for Mayr.
With the technical apparatus in hand, Poulton moves from diagnosis to the under-
lying reality of species. He says:

Diagnosis ... is founded upon the conception that there is an unbroken transition in char-

acters of the component individuals of a species. Underlying this idea are the more funda-

mental conceptions of species as groups of individuals related by Syngamy and Epigony.

He argues, contrary to Darwin’s views, that sterility is an effect of Asyngamy, not

vice versa; reiterating Max Muller’s and Moritz Wagner’s views on speciation, as the

topic came to be known later. Thistleton-Dyer had said that older writers employed

... the word species as a designation for the totality of all individuals differing from all

others by marks or characters which experience showed to be reasonably constant or

trustworthy, as is the practice of modern naturalists.^19

(^13) Butler 1884, 2 41.
(^14) Bowler 2003.
(^15) Poulton 1903.
(^16) Moore 1889, 179f. Moore’s short passage is testament to his scholarship; he also rightly identies Ray
as the originator of both a natural denition of species and also of xity of species.
(^17) Thistleton-Dyer 1902, 370. Poulton is mistaken. Thistleton-Dyer had ascribed binomials to Bauhin
and Jung, not xity of species, which he also ascribes to Ray.
(^18) Poulton 1908, 60–62.
(^19) Thistleton-Dyer 1902, 370.