b THE FOUNDATION OF ECOLOGY 



9. The evidence from historical development. This extremely brief 

 resume of what has been accomplished in the several lines of ecological 

 research makes evident the almost complete absence of correlation and of 

 system. The whole field not merely lacks system, but it also demands a 

 much keener perception of the relative value of the different tendencies 

 already developed. It is inevitable from the great number of tyros, and 

 of dilettante students of ecology in comparison with the few specialists, that 

 the surface of the field should have received all of the attention. It is, 

 however, both unfortunate and unscientific that great lines of development 

 should be entirely unknown to all but a few. There is no other department 

 of botany in which the superficial study of more than half a century ago 

 still prevails to the exclusion of better methods, many of which have been 

 known for a decade or more. It is clear, then, that the imperative need of 

 ecology is the proper coordination of its various points of view, and the 

 working out of a definite system which will make possible a ready recogni- 

 tion of that which is fundamental and of that which is merely collateral. 

 The historical development, as is well understood, can furnish but a slight 

 clue to this. It is a fact of common knowledge that the first development 

 of any subject is general, and usually superficial also. True values come 

 out clearly only after the whole field has been surveyed. For these reasons, 

 as will be pointed out in detail later, the newer viewpoints are regarded as 

 either the most important or the most fundamental. Experimental ecology- 

 will throw a flood of light upon plant structure and function, while exact 

 methods of studying the habitat are practically certain of universal appli- 

 cation in the future. 



PRESENT STATUS OF ECOLOGY 



10. The lack of special training. The bane of the recent development 

 popularly known as ecology has been a widespread feeling that anyone can 

 do ecological work, regardless of preparation. There is nothing in modem 

 botany more erroneous than this feeling. The whole task of ecology is to 

 find out what the living plant and the living formation are doing and have 

 done in response to definite complexes of -factors, i. e., habitats. In this 

 sense, ecology is practically coextensive with botany, and the student of a 

 local flora who knows a few hundred species is no more competent to do 

 ecological work than he is to reconstruct the phylogeny of the vegetable 

 kingdom, or to explain the transmission of ancestral qualities. The com- 

 prehensive and fundamental character of the subject makes a broad special 

 training even more requisite than in more restricted lines of botanical in- 

 quiry. The ecologist must first of all be a botanist, not a mere cataloguer 

 of plants, and he must also possess a particular training in the special meth- 



