Phyletic Radiation

Letter
Dearest Mr. Dourwind,

I hope this letter finds you before the next Naturalist Society meeting. I've a paper in the works which you simply must read. But I must parse words and be brief here.The cladists have proposed a proxy by which we may look at those most recent leaves and branches of the tree and finding deeper understanding. We use our observations of organisms' traits to place them into their most parsimonious taxa. But what of those traits which are not in line with Occam's Razor? Homoplasious characters, my friend. Perhaps there has been a resolution. Your great work would imply to us that all those things that walk the Earth came from a monophyletic radiation. In light of what we've seen in the trench, what my colleagues have described is a potential polyphyletic radiation. Meditate on this if you will.

Always your friend,

Alfred R. Wallesse