My last post was sent with unedited draft material attached. Please disregard the earlier posting. The intended posting follows: In discussing the nature of Tulipa linifolia and Tulipa batalinii, Mark McDonough says: >Personally I find the two species instantly recognizable and distinct, yet >some schools of thought put these two entities together as synonyms. Mark, I'll bet you find Great Danes and Chihuahuas "instantly recognizable and distinct", yet the received wisdom is that they are the same species. Thank you for providing an entree into one of my favorite rants. : ) The days are long gone when taxonomists should try to base specific distinctions on what things look like. From the time of Plato and his concept of the eidos (and no doubt long before that) until the end of the nineteenth century, taxonomists routinely based their decisions on what things looked like. No one knew any better. But once science began to appreciate the significance of Gregor Mendel's work, things got turned inside out. Cutting- edge biologists came to a revolutionary realization: Organisms are not members of the same species because they look alike. It's the other way around: they look alike because they are members of the same species (i.e. they look alike because they share the same gene pool). And it seems to me that some taxonomists, even now a century later, do not understand the implications of this. Mother Nature, meanwhile, goes about her business oblivious to all of this. Jim McKenney jimmckenney@starpower.net