In a message dated 1/23/2004 7:54:23 PM Central Standard Time, jshields104@insightbb.com writes: > What the heck, most of taxonomy is subjective! Until the methodology of > cladistics was > introduced, there was no quantitative way to handle classification -- until > then it was entirely subjective. > Hi, I agree wholeheartedly, we are still far from knowing the boundaries of a species. Charles Darwin wrote, "... I look at the term species as one arbitrarily given, for the sake of convenience, to a set of individuals closely resembling each other, and that it does not essentially differ from the term variety, which is given to less distinct and more fluctuating forms." Darwin was happy to acknowledge that defining a species was not always possible. He wrote, "In short, we shall have to treat species in the same manner as those naturalists treat genera, who admit that genera are merely artificial combinations made for convenience." Darwin did not argue that species did not exist, but he did argue that they were darn difficult to precisely define in all cases. Link 2: Origin of Species, Chapter 3 http://literaturepage.com/read/… Link 1: Origin of Species, Chapter 14 (by Science Times) http://www.science-times.org/chapter14page11.html Cordially,