ABSTRACT
To a considerable extent, the development of systematic botany and zoology over the next twenty years or more will be determined by capital allocations now being decided. The description of new species will inevitably form a continually decreasing proportion of the activity of systematists; it is already comparatively rare in Vertebrata and Angiospermae, though undoubtedly large numbers of existing species remain to be described in such groups as Nematoda, the lower fungi, Protozoa, and some orders of insects. The future of biological systematics will probably be determined in the botany and zoology departments of our universities rather than in the museums or the naturalists' societies—though both the museums and the societies have indispensable roles to play if systematics is to survive and flourish. If systematics is eventually restored to its central position in academic botany and zoology, this will probably be one manifestation of a change in the general 'intellectual climate'.
