 Darwin’s analysis of the “species question” is a complex issue that has many implications for how his work was read by his contemporaries and successors. This still forms a topic of extensive discussion in the literature (see  species  and  Darwinism,  this encyclopedia; Mallet 2013; Hodge 2013b; R.A. Richards 2010; Wilkins 2009; Stamos 2007; Sloan 2008, 2013). His sometimes contradictory statements on this issue—alternating between overt denials of the reality of species in some places, and clear affirmation of the reality of species in others—have been seen by some scholars as an intentional rhetorical strategy (Stamos 2007; Beatty 1985).