THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE VEGETATION OF 
NEW YORK STATE. 
Introduction. 
In this bulletin emphasis is laid upon the idea of develop- 
ment in vegetation. I wish to bring the reader to think of 
vegetation at work, of its forward march and of what it is 
capable of doing in its course. A man who sows his field to 
grain may have put all his financial hopes into the develop- 
ment of vegetation, and it certainly is the wonder of our 
time to behold this unfolding of the season’s planting into 
the fields of waving foliage and finally into fructification 
with a harvest so vast that a great nation’s concerns center 
about the utilization of it. The miles of carloads of grain, 
the food of millions of people for the year, form some index 
of the energy of vegetation development as represented by 
the season’s grain crop. But I am not writing of the season’s 
crop development. Not even of the total of vegetation devel- 
opment of any one season, although the rebound of vegetation 
after the enforced dormancy of winter is always the great 
phenomenon of the year. I am thinking rather of the de 
velopment of vegetation through the course of years wherein 
it comes to occupy the land and transform it into a new and 
different habitat, as when a man having abandoned a worn- 
out field years ago returns to find a forest there with its 
shade giving crown, its quiet moist air, its blanket of loose 
rich leaf mold, its population of forest dwellers. 
In following the course of development my inclination 
would lead to asking whence came our vegetation? What 
has been its course through prehistoric ages? How is our 
vegetation related to the plant life of the rest of North 
America and of Europe—Asia? How does it behave in the 
presence of an environment of climatic and earth surface 
conditions such as New York State offers? How has the 
environment shaped the course and character of vegetation, 
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