Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Sidor ...
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
Below is the raw OCR text
from the above scanned image.
Do you see an error? Proofread the page now!
Här nedan syns maskintolkade texten från faksimilbilden ovan.
Ser du något fel? Korrekturläs sidan nu!
This page has never been proofread. / Denna sida har aldrig korrekturlästs.
The identification
of the species is
un-salisfactory.
I neu’ melhod must
hr, crenled for the
descriptions of species.
duced for a single one out of all tliese eleven species, namely Nesidea frequens (G. \V. Müller).
Is the mandible quite similar in all these species or is it subject to variation? No information
is given on this point.
It is to be noted that N. HIRSCHMANN is his very line essay on the Ostraeod fauna of
the Gulf of Finland, 1912, has given a good diagnosis of the genus Cythere.
In identifying previously described marine Ostraeod s most investigators also
show very great super fici ality and uncertainty.
The most striking instance of this is probably J. G. Egger. In 1901 this writer published
a work called ,,0 stracoden aus Meeresgrun d proben, gelothet v o n
1874—76 von S. M. S. G a z e 11 e“. Out of 149 species ineluded in this work no less than
almost half are stated to have been previously found in Europe in a fossilized condition, in
post-tertiary, pliocène, miocene, oligocène, eocene and chalk. Most of these species were from
antarctic regions and had not been found living in our Scandinavian seas. In other words,
according to this author there was a great resemblance between the present antarctic Ostraeod
fauna and the Ostraeod fauna in Europe during the tertiary and chalk periods, a state
of affaire, which. if it turned out to be correct, would be of the greatest interest. G. W. MÜLLER,
however, undertook an investigation in order to test the identifications of this author and
arrived at a really surprising result: scarcely a single one of them was correct. G. W. Müller
writes as foliows about this 1908, p. 144: „Eine solche Nachprüfung ergibt, daß kaum eine
Bestimmung richtig ist; ich habe zurzeit eine größere Zahl von Bestimmungen geprüft und nicht.
eine richtig gefunden. (Vor Jahren habe ich die sämtlichen Bestimmungen geprüft, die Resultate
sind mir zurzeit nicht zugänglich; soweit ich mich entsinnen kann, ließ sich nur eine Bestimmung
mit einiger Wahrscheinlichkeit aufrecht erhalten.)“ It seems to me beyond all doubt that
G. W. Müller’s view is correct.
Good instances of this state of affaire are also found in G. S. BRADY’s work on the
„Challenger“ O s t r a c o cl s. Pl. XXIV in this work affords, for instance, a very good
proof; Cythere dictyon G. S. Brad v, which, according to the statements of this author, seems to
have a cosmopolitan distribution, is certainly not a natural unit.
Another very striking proof of this uncertainty will be found below in the remark under
Asterope aberrata.
In short everything is vague in this field of work ....
This state of affaire cannot continue. A firmer basis must be ereated for the
classification and so for all our knowledge of this group of animais. The classifier must make his
methods of description more strict. The general descriptions of habitus which pay attention
to only a few organs must disappear. Greater and greater exactitude must replace dilettantism.
As many organs as possible must be subjeeted to a careful investigation and described correctly,
attention being paid to the variety of the details. — In an essay entitled „Prinzipien
der Systematik, etc.“, 1914, L. Plate put forward, p. 95, the following fundamental
principle for modern classification: „Jedes konstante Merkmal kann zur
T r e n n u n g von U n t e r a r t e n u n d A r t en ve r w a n d t w erde n.“ The
charactere for distinguishing the different systematie categories may be obtained equallv well
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
