VOLUME LVI NUMBER 5 
5 is se 
BOTANICAL (GAZETTE 
NOVEMBER 1913 
TEMPERATURE COEFFICIENTS IN PLANT GEOGRAPHY 
AND CLIMATOLOGY’ 
Burton EvpWARD LIVINGSTON 
AND 
GRACE JOHNSON LIVINGSTON 
(WITH THREE FIGURES) 
Introduction 
Plant geographers and climatologists have long been convinced 
that temperature is one of the most important of the conditions 
governing the distribution of plants and animals, but very little has 
as yet been accomplished toward finding out what sort of quantita- 
tive relations may exist between the nature of floral and faunal 
associations and the temperature conditions that are geographically 
concomitant therewith. The progress of descriptive ecology has 
shown clearly enough that these associations have their geographical 
limits, and increased accuracy of description has developed hand in 
hand with the idea that association boundaries must be considered 
as peripheries of certain complexes of environmental conditions. 
It is common, in recent papers upon plant and animal geogra- 
phy, to give considerable attention to descriptions of the climatic 
complexes which characterize the vegetational or faunal areas dealt 
with, but such description of climates has thus far usually consisted 
in the mere quotation or compilation of various meteorological 
data. In order to correlate these data with physiological phe- 
nomena, in such a way as to throw light upon the effective climatic 
* Botanical contribution from the Johns Hopkins University, no. 36. 
349 
