Such a mere abstract of Kerner's general results, however, can give no adequate idea of their cogency: for this arises from the number of species in which specific characters are thus found to change, and even to _interchange_, with different conditions of life. Thus he gives an amusing parable of an ardent young botanist, Simplicius, who starts on a tour in the Tyrol with the works of the most authoritative systematists to assist him in his study of the flora. The result is that Simplicius becomes so hopelessly bewildered in his attempts at squaring their diagnostic descriptions with the facts of nature, that he can only exclaim in despair--"Sonderbare Flora, diese tirolische, in welcher so viele characteristische Pflanzen nur schlechte Arten, oder gar noch schlechter als schlechte Arten, sind." Now, in giving illustrations of this young man's troubles, Kerner fills five or six pages with little else than rows of specific names. Upon the whole, Kerner concludes that the more the subject is studied, the more convinced must the student become that all distinction between species as "good" and "bad" vanishes. In other words, the more that our knowledge of species and of their diagnostic characters increases, the more do we find that "bad species" multiply at the expense of "good species"; so that eventually we must relinquish the idea of "good species" altogether. Or, conversely stated, we must agree to regard as equally "good species" any and every assemblage of individuals which present the same peculiarities: provided that these peculiarities do not rise to a generic value, they equally deserve to be regarded as "specific characters," no matter how trivial, or how local, they may be. In fact, he goes so far as to say that when, as a result of experiments in transplantation from one set of physical conditions to another, seedlings are found to present any considerable and constant change in their specific characters, these seedlings are no less entitled to be regarded as a "good species" than are the plants from which they have been derived. Probably few systematists will consent to go quite so far as this; but the fact that Kerner has been led deliberately to propound such a statement as a result of his wide observations and experiments is about as good evidence as possible on the points with which we are here concerned. For even Simplicius would hardly be quite so simple as to suppose that each one of all the characters which he observes in his "remarkable flora," so largely composed of "bad or even worse than bad species," is of utilitarian significance.