10 CARNEGIE INSTITUTION OF WASHINGTON. 



and views the successive plant-complexes which invade any 

 region as so many organic units, each enacting its role no less 

 definitely than is enacted the role of an individual plant or other 

 organism. This work of Professor Clements brings the relatively 

 new science of ecology and paleo-ecology prominently forward. 

 It is a profoundly instructive book also by reason of the analogies 

 it suggests, especially to the student of contemporary events, 

 between the struggle for existence of the lower species and the 

 struggle for existence of the highest species in the biological world. 



In further indication of the diversity, if not the cathohcity, 

 of the Institution's activities, it is worthy of mention in this 

 connection that Dr. H. Oskar Sommer's edition of the Vulgate 

 Version of the Arthurian Romances has been completed during 

 the year by the publication of an eighth volume giving an index 

 to names and places of the preceding volumes; that a concordance 

 to Spenser, edited by Professor Charles G. Osgood, and a con- 

 cordance to the poet Horace, edited by Professor Lane Cooper, 

 have been issued, while a concordance to the poems of Keats is in 

 press; and that a new edition of ''The Old Yellow Book" (Source 

 of Browning's ''The Ring and the Book") has been reproduced 

 and is now ready to meet the legitimate demand which has 

 exhausted the supply of the first edition pubUshed eight years 

 ago. Special progress has been made hkewise in the publication 

 of the series of "Classics of International Law," issued by the 

 Institution under the editorship of Professor James Brown 

 Scott, the works of Vattel, Rachel, and Textor, eight volumes in 

 all, having appeared. 



It is a noteworthy fact, illustrating the fallibility of offhand 

 opinions and unreasoned predictions, that "TheOld Yellow Book," 

 Professor Boss's Star Catalogue (reproduced photographically in 

 1915), Dr. Erwin F. Smith's work on bacteriology, and Dr. F. E. 

 Wright's exposition of methods of research in petrography have 

 proved to be the publications of the Institution thus far most in 

 demand, if we may judge by the public wilHngness to purchase 

 them at the nominal prices for which they are offered for sale. 

 It is believed that this willingness to purchase at the cost of 

 production affords the best objective measure of the merits of 

 these works; for although some might hold that "The Old 

 Yellow Book" appeals to the unworthy as well as to the higher 



