THE NEW FIELD-BOTANY 353 



emerged. Collections of dried specimens were the order 

 of the day, and the summum bonum of the early field- 

 botanist was the discovery and naming of a new species. 

 Although the zealous field-botanist and compiler of lists 

 of species found in given areas has always been in 

 evidence, there came into being, in due course, a new 

 and useful activity in the ranks of plant students. 

 This took the form of laboratorial research into minute 

 details of structure and physiology. It has been facili- 

 tated by the extension of chemical knowledge, and im- 

 proved methods of microscopical research. The highly 

 specialized nature of laboratory inquiry has, perhaps, 

 occasioned the divorce of its devotees to some extent 

 from field operations, yet it has added great stores of 

 knowledge of the utmost value. The field-botanist has 

 served science by the discovery, naming, and systema- 

 tizing of species; the laboratory worker has discovered 

 secrets of life and structure. 



Within quite recent years a new form of botanical 

 inquiry has come into existence. It has been made 

 possible by the work of the old field-botanists and the 

 newer laboratory workers. Moreover, it may be re- 

 garded as the logical outcome of their efforts. Equipped 

 with the noble heritage of knowledge bequeathed by 

 former observers, the botanist is once more finding his 

 way into the fields, bent upon a newer phase of inquiry, 

 which may rightly be termed the new field-botany. It 

 is a healthy, out-of-doors study of a very comprehensive 

 character, for it involves all the old features of botanical 

 inquiry plus something more. 



The new field-botany is Ecology (Gr. oilcos, a house). 

 Haeckel defined Ecology as the science treating of the 



45 



