REVIEWS 59 



tion, and the increase of their capacity to serve hu;nan needs. Its pri- 

 mary concern was not economic, but social betterment. From start to 

 finish, it was an assertion of the pubhc interest in such a handling of 

 the sources of wealth as would result in the greatest good to the 

 greatest number. It sought not merely more prosperity and continued 

 prosperity, but diffused prosperity. This greater part of the whole 

 matter is all but omitted in the present volume save for Professor Ely's 

 side-heading "Justice in Distribution," a misleading label because, as 

 conservation was conceived of and presented to the nation in the Roose- 

 velt days, this old sentimental battle-ground was avoided. Instead 

 there was substituted a new, intellectual conception — the necessity for 

 better conditions for the sake of national efficiency. P. W. 



Climate and Plant Grozvth in Certain Vegetative Associations. By 

 Arthur W. Sampson. Bulletin Xo. 700, U. S. Department of Agricul- 

 ture. Forest Service, October 1918. 72 pages. 



Ecologists have been keenly alive to the importance of serious re- 

 search to determine the relation of climate to the growth and develop- 

 ment of vegetation. Sampson, in the bulletin under review, places 

 emphasis on the climatic requirements of various plant types as largely 

 responsible for the results obtained in experimental seeding and in 

 forest planting. He believes that, when once the adverse climatic fac- 

 tors are known, failures may be largely avoided by the judicious selec- 

 tion of sites or of species especially adapted to withstand the limiting 

 factors. The reviewer agrees that a perfect interpretation of the divers 

 site factors with reference to growth and development in different plant 

 forms is much to be desired, but the problem is a difficult one and a 

 long way from satisfactory solution. The author, by planning and 

 carrying out an extensive series of experiments at the forest research 

 station in central Utah, has added not a little to the rapidly accumu- 

 lating data on site factors and vegetation. The work was planned, 

 first, to obtain a comparison of the climatic requirements of the main 

 plant types of the region, and, second, to determine quantitatively the 

 relation between various environmental factors on the one hand and 

 plant growth and certain other physiological functions on the other. 

 The experiments were conducted over a period of two years and in 

 the following vegetative types : oak-brush, aspen-fir, and spruce-fir. 

 The investigations were chiefly concerned with recording and summa- 

 rizing the meteorological data and in determining the relation of certain 

 weather factors to growth, water requirements, and certain other phys- 



