553 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY 



geology and climate on the distribution of our flora must not blind us 

 to the fact that these agencies do not work independently. The inter- 

 action of these, the further complication of the personal "aggressive- 

 ness" of certain species, if that term can be applied to plants, and 

 many other minor factors, make the problem most complex. In any 

 particular case it may be practically impossible to say whether a given 

 plant exhibits response to climatic or geological factors, or to both, 

 least of all as to what possible combination of both. All that can be 

 done is to set down the facts of distribution, both with relation to 

 geology and to climate, and to estimate the relative proportion of the 

 potency of each. That such a study must spell a large measure of 

 failure should deter no one. For by it is acquired an outlook upon the 

 vegetation of an area that no preparation of lists of species can pos- 

 sibly confer. Upon such a conception a flora ceases to be a catalogue, 

 mere scaffolding for the structure that is to follow, as necessary and 

 as uninteresting as the telephone directory. Upon such a conception 

 a flora need not concern itself with the latest hair-splitting refine- 

 ments of the ever-present species-monger. All of these things are sub- 

 sidiary to the larger problems that come from what may be called a 

 causative study of a flora. By it each of our native plants takes on an 

 added interest, to many there may be attached a history that fascinates 

 the most unimaginative, to the whole is given a new impetus and a 

 broader vision, which can make of any landscape something very like 

 a dramatic spectacle. 



Troublesome persons with a practical bent will want to know of 

 what use such a study of any flora can be, least of all of the region near 

 New York. Apart from its consideration as a great out-door experi- 

 ment or laboratory where all sorts of principles of distribution can be 

 studied at first hand, there are purely local problems that are commer- 

 cially important. The draining and reclamation of our great salt- 

 marsh areas on Long Island and in New Jersey, which is bound up with 

 mosquito extermination, offers an attractive field of work where such 

 knowledge will have a direct bearing. The profitable utilization of the 

 southern part of Long Island, now a dreary waste of scrub-oak and 

 pitch-pine, and of the pine-barrens of New Jersey, must involve the 

 utilization of such studies to insure a full measure of success. The 

 timber and crop possibilities of some parts of the area are well indi- 

 cated by the wild vegetation, and the vegetational history of many parts 

 of the region must serve as a clue to its most profitable future utiliza- 

 tion. Thus a study of a flora from the standpoint of its fltness for its 

 environment, and the intimately related study of the environment as 

 fitted to the existing flora, must bulk large in any rational scheme for 

 the agricultural or horticultural development of the region near the 

 city, many parts of which are still wholly undeveloped, or, worse still, 

 have been recklessly exploited. 



