1915] Book Review 69 
stations in “the intervening territory between its northern outposts 
in... .Newfoundland and its southerly stations in New Jersey”, from 
which, according to Taylor, it “is lacking” — in Nova Scotia, Prince 
Edward Island, New Brunswick, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, 
and Massachusetts; while “its northern outposts in northern New 
York” are 500 miles south of the real “northern outposts” on Rupert 
River, entering Hudson Bay. Furthermore, the author seems to have 
ignored the records from Staten Island, Long Island and Rhode 
Island. Ina single volume (vii.) of the Bulletin of the Torrey Botani- 
cal Club occur the following seemingly trustworthy records for A. 
nemoralis: - "between River Head and Canoe Place," Suffolk Co., 
L. I. (E. S. Miller, p. 18); “on the Cretaceous soils of Staten Island” 
(N. L. Britton, p. 82); "Southern Rhode Island" (W. W. Bailey, p. 
98). The fact is, that Aster nemoralis has not, as guessed by Taylor, 
been wiped out between New Jersey and Newfoundland by the ice, 
nor has it been crowded out by more “aggressive” plants. On the 
contrary, it abounds in the siliceous and granitic areas of eastern and 
central New England, Nova Scotia, and the Laurentian region of 
southern Labrador and northern Quebec (all profoundly glaciated); 
and it does so because it there finds the acid peats in which it delights 
to grow. But in the extensive basic or calcareous areas of western 
New England and much of eastern Canada, just as in the more fertile 
sections of Newfoundland, New York and northwestern New Jersey, 
it is rare or absent because the lowlands of those areas are mostly too 
calcareous to suit the plant. 
In his effort to make the glaciation or non-glaciation of regions 
during the Pleistocene the dominant factor in determining the present 
distribution of southern plants which have reached Newfoundland or 
Nova Scotia, the author seems to have lost sight of a much more 
potent factor, namely, the now submerged continental shelf. This 
ancient extension of the Coastal Plain is hardly mentioned by Taylor. 
Nevertheless, when carefully considered in connection with really 
accurate phytogeographic data, it will be found to have played a far 
more important part in the distribution of Coastal Plain species than 
is generally recognized. 
The reviewer's reason for thus entering at length into a discussion 
of the Introduction to a book, which, in spite of many admirable 
points, proves, on examination, to have been written without the 
painstaking care or the accurate compilation of facts which alone 
should be the groundwork for scientific deductions, is that he is in- 
tensely interested in the phytogeographic problems of northeastern 
America. And, at the risk of being unpopular, he feels it important, 
for the advancement of sound scholarship, to protest against the 
superficial and careless compilations which are so freely being pub- 
lished, even by potentially great institutions. Much inaccurate and 
unscholarly publication has seriously injured taxonomy; the same 
tendency intensified has cheapened ecology; and, unless we take the 
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