148 ENVIRONMENTAL CONDITIONS. 



The experimentation needed is exceedingly complicated and ex- 

 pensive, at least from the present standpoint of biological science, 

 but would probably not prove particularly difficult in competent hands. 

 A special laboratory is of course required — not a series of office rooms, 

 nor the mere contents of an architectural exterior, but a carefully 

 planned and elaborately and logically equipped building or series of 

 buildings, with the requisite greenhouses, cellars, constant-tempera- 

 ture rooms and the like. The main requirements of the work here 

 contemplated are a variety of controlled conditional complexes, under 

 which plants may be grown. Many of the methods of such control 

 have still to be devised, but enough has been accomplished so that 

 ultimate success may be regarded as assured. The moisture conditions 

 of soil and air can be controlled with comparatively little trouble, as 

 can also those of temperature. The control of chemical conditions 

 offers a field for the exercise of ingenuity, and that of light and electric 

 conditions will require still more attention. 



Many investigators in plant physiology have been able to control, 

 in more or less satisfactory ways, one or two, rarely three or four, of 

 the influential conditions, but no plant has ever yet been studied with 

 even approximate control of all the influential conditions of its surround- 

 ings. Since the influence of any condition is determined by the 

 others, it is clear that, for any true appreciation of the relations be- 

 tween plant and enviroment, all of the influential conditions must be 

 quantitatively kno^\Ti. 



The suggestion here put forward, that thoroughgoing quantitative 

 studies on the relations between environmental conditions and plant 

 development are to be regarded as the only logical basis for a truly 

 scientific ecology and agriculture, and that such studies are not possible 

 without the elaborate facilities of a specially constructed laboratory, 

 was largely included in a plea for a climatic laboratory made by A. P. 

 de Candolle as early as 1855 in his Geographie Botanique Kaisonee. 

 Apparently the idea has never borne fruit. In 1891 Abbe^ repeated 

 and indorsed the suggestion of de Candolle. The utter lack of apprecia- 

 tion with which the arduous work of Abbe was received, in bringing 

 together what he could in a limited time, of the literature bearing 

 upon the relation of agricultural crops to climatic conditions, is to be 

 estimated from the mere fact that his summary lay unpubHshed for 

 14 years and was at length brought out, in apparently perfunctory 

 form, only in 1905! 



1 Abbe, Cleveland. A first report on the relations between climates and crops, U. S. Dept. 

 Agric, Weather Bur. Bull. 36, 1905. See especially p. 23 et seq. 



