396 Forestry Quarterly 



soils and the water requirements of plants is certainly an impor- 

 tant contribution, but since this work, in its present stages at 

 least, is not directly applicable to forestry I will pass it by. Only 

 the future can tell what the value of this work will be to the 

 forester. This class of work is now in its infancy ; in fact some 

 very excellent work on the water requirements of plants, which 

 has been conducted for a number of years by Kiesselbach ana 

 others at the Agricultural Experiment Station at Lincoln, 

 Nebraska, promises to make Briggs and Shantz's work (and all 

 other work, for that matter) appear ephemeral, if not entirely 

 antiquated. The work of Clements in the Rock Mountains, 

 from a forestry as well as from an ecological point of view, is 

 important. In his study of plant succession he analyzes the de- 

 velopment of the vegetation of the western mountain ranges. This 

 work, which has been carried on for over 10 years, will go a 

 long way toward solving the forester's problem of the successional 

 development of forest types. Then, also, the ecological work of 

 the Desert Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, 

 located at Tucson, Arizona, is worthy of attention. MacDougal 

 with a large scientific stafif and excellent equipment is directing 

 the botanical work, a large part of which is along autecological 

 lines. This station is a model ; it is to be hoped that some day 

 American forestry will be able to boast of one like it. 



The fact that the British have taken the lead in plant ecology 

 is evidenced by the formation of The British Ecological Society 

 in 1913, which publishes quarterly The Journal of Ecology, the 

 only periodical exclusively dealing with ecological subjects. The 

 recent work of the British ecologists has been brought together 

 quite complete by A. G. Tansley in his Types of British Vege- 

 tation (Cambridge, 1911). 



The latest development in plant ecology in the United States, 

 and one which is of the greatest significance, is the formation in 

 April, 1916, of The Ecological Society of America which includes 

 in its charter membership no less than 358 scientists interested in 

 one or more phases of ecology. The idea of such a society origi- 

 nated among plant ecologists but it is gratifying to note the large 

 number of foresters and forest ecologists included in its ranks. 

 For this reason this society establishes the first formal bond be- 

 tween plant ecology and forest ecology and marks, I hope, a new 

 era for both phases of this important science. 



