98 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



THE IS^EW FIELD BOTAXY. 



By BYRON D. HALSTED, Sc. D., 



OF EUTGERS COLLEGE. 



THERE is something novel every day; were it not so tliis earth 

 would grow monotonous to all, even as it does now to many, 

 and chiefly because such do not have the opportunity or the de- 

 sire to learn some new thing. Eacts unknown before are con- 

 stantly coming to the light, and principles are being deduced that 

 serve as a stepping stone to other and broader fields of knowledge. 

 So accustomed are we to this that even a new branch of science 

 may dawn upon the horizon without causing a wonder in our minds. 

 In this day of ologies the birth of a new one comes without the 

 formal two-line notice in the daily press, just as old ones pass from 

 view without tear or epitaph. 



Pliytoecology as a word is not long as scientific -terms go, and 

 the Greek that lies back of it barely suggests the meaning of the 

 term, a fact not at all peculiar to the present instance. Of course, 

 it has to do with plants, and is therefore a branch of botany. 



In one sense that which it stands for is not new, and, as usual, 

 the word has come in the wake of the facts and principles it repre- 

 sents, and therefore becomes a convenient term for a branch of 

 knowledge — a handle, so to say — by which that group of ideas may 

 be held up for study and further growth. The word ecology was 

 first employed by Haeckel, a leading ligLt in zoology in our day, 

 to designate the environmental side of animal life. 



We will not concern ourselves with definitions, but discuss the 

 field that the term is coined to cover, and leave the reader to for- 

 mulate a short concise statement of its meaning. 



Within the last year a new botanical guide book for teachers 

 has been published, of considerable originality and merit, in which 

 the subject-matter is thrown into four groups, and one of these is 

 Ecology. Another text-book for secondary schools is now before 

 us in which ecology is the heading of one of the three parts 

 into which the treatise is divided. The large output of the edu- 

 cational press at the present time along the line in hand suggests 

 that the magazine press should sound the dejDths of the new branch 

 of science that is pushing its way to the front, or being so pushed 

 by its adherents, and echo the merits of it along the line. 



Botany in its stages of growth is interesting historically. It 

 fascinated for a time one of the greatest minds in the modern 

 school, and as a result we have the rich and fruitful history of 

 the science as seen through eyes as great as Julius Sachs's, the mas- 



