COMMUNITY ANALYSIS 43 



cumstances. Or we may use all our ingenuity 

 in collecting in a given area for, say, thirty min- 

 utes and keep careful count of all the specimens 

 taken; later these may be compared with the 

 results from similar periods of collecting in other 

 regions. 



We may turn to random marking or banding 

 individuals we think we can recognize and then 

 record their location at intervals. By such a 

 method in the study of the university community 

 we might find that a well-set-up, fine-looking 

 individual X, is apparently to be taken every- 

 where, now in the physics building, now at a 

 faculty meeting, in the faculty club, in a dean's 

 office, at a football game, alumni dinners, senate 

 meetings; that he has tea with some regularity 

 with the president; and we might conclude that 

 we had discovered one of the important men of 

 the community and we might be correct, for the 

 data might concern an important academic figure. 

 On the other hand, a bespectacled recluse taken 

 only rarely and then in limited habitat niches 

 might easily be still more important, more so 

 even then twenty X's or hundreds of other mem- 

 bers of the community present in significant 

 numbers. 1 Such a one might be a distinguished 



1 In nature, the bobcat is rarely seen ever by trained hunters yet 

 one of these in a region is of more importance than are hundreds of 

 mice. 



