NOTES AND COMMENT 



It frequently happens that the published results of zoological field 

 work give so much attention to the physical conditions and the vege- 

 tation of the areas studied that they are of interest even to those botan- 

 ists who have a deaf ear and a closed eye for all of the phenomena of 

 animal life. Dr. Lee R. Dice, of the Kansas State Agricultural College, 

 has published a paper on the Distribution of the Land Vertebrates of 

 Southeastern Washington (University of California Publications in Zo- 

 ology) which gives some information regarding the vegetation of that 

 region and a few excellent illustrations of it. The field of his work ex- 

 tended from the sagebrush region along the Columbia River, through 

 the grassy plains drained by the Walla Walla River, to the Blue Moun- 

 tains. It is interesting to learn from this paper that the dissatisfaction 

 with the life zone system, which has been prevalent among botanists 

 for some time, has also appeared among field zoologists. One of the 

 strongest defences of Dr. Merriam's scheme of life zones has been the 

 plea that it is biological, and that the primary role of temperature as a 

 controlling distributional factor is more strongly played in the animal 

 kingdom than it is in the vegetable kingdom, where moisture relations 

 are highly important. Dr. Dice states, ''It has not yet been estab- 

 lished that small differences of temperature of the degree supposedly 

 separating some of the life zones are as important barriers to distribu- 

 tion as are some of the more marked differences due to variations in 

 rainfall and humidity." He even goes further and states that " . . . 

 it cannot be considered proved that the temperature relations estab- 

 lished by Merriam are the particular ones which determine the limits of 

 distribution of any species of animal." 



The Swiss Phytogeographical Commission has issued a program of 

 prospective work on the geobotany of Switzerland, containing a list of 

 works relating to the vegetation of that country and numerous titles 

 of papers dealing with the study of environmental conditions. The 

 admirable and ambitious plans of the Commission provide for exact 

 distributional records, the securing of meteorological data both in ex- 

 tenso and in parvo, the devoting of greater attention to cryptogams, the 



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