This paper proves a theorem on the composition of, what we call, Butcher series. This Theorem is shown to be fundamental for the theory of Runge-Kutta methods: the formulas for the Taylor expansion of RK-methods and multiderivative RK-methods as well as formulas for the operation of the "Butcher group" (which describes the composition of RK-methods) are easy consequences. We do not attempt to realize the series as (generalized) Runge-Kutta methods, so we are not forced to restrict ourselves to the finite dimensional case. The theory extends to the multiderivative case as well, and the formulas remain valid for series which are not realizable as Runge-Kutta methods at all. Finally we extend the multi-value methods of J. Butcher [2] to the multiderivative case, which leads to a big class of integration methods for ordinary differential equations, including the methods of Nordsieck and Gear [3]. The defintions and notations of [4] are used throughout this paper, many of the results are proved here again.