CHAPTER IV. THE PLANT FORMATION 

 Methods of Investigation and Record 



198. The need of exact methods. The use of instruments in the study of 

 the habitat has made it evident that the loose methods of descriptive ecology 

 were altogether inadequate to the accurate investigation of the formation. 

 This feeling has been heightened by the recognition of the fact that vegeta- 

 tion exhibits both development and structure, and is, in consequence, open 

 to exact methods of inquiry. In the search for feasible methods, it was 

 quickly seen that the quadrat, first^ used for determining the abundance of 

 species, furnished the key to the problem. Accordingly, the principle un- 

 derlying it, viz., that of intimate detailed study and record, was developed 

 and extended in such a way as to give rise to a number of methods of 

 precision. These have been applied in the field for several years with 

 signal success, and they are here described in the conviction that they con- 

 stitute a satisfactorv svstem, if not, indeed, the only one for the exact study 

 of formations. 



There has been a growing appreciation of the fact that the superficial 

 methods of descriptive ecology made it impossible to build upon such a 

 foundation, and they, indeed, were making actual progress in the field of 

 ecology more and more difficult. Ecologists have now begun to see clearly 

 that precise methods are as indispensable in the habitat as they are to the 

 study of the structure and modification of the plant. For some reason, 

 however, they have been slow to perceive that accuracy in the investigation 

 of the cause, the habitat, is a fruitless task unless it be followed by corres- 

 ponding exactness in the study of the effect, the formation. After having 

 urged the fundamental necessity of instrumental methods, for six or seven 

 years, both in season and out of season, the writer does not feel called 

 upon to further plead the cause of the quadrat. The final acceptance of the 

 instrument was inevitable if progress were to be made in the habitat, and 

 it is just as obvious that the quadrat must be accepted if the study of the 

 habitat is to bear fruit in the interpretation of the formation. The use of 

 the quadrat does not mean that the general methods of descriptive ecology 

 are all to be discarded, whether they have value or not. The statement that 

 quadrat methods are indispensable signifies merely that they must be used 

 for research work in the development and structure of vegetation. They are 



1 Pound and Clements. A Method of Determining the Abundance of Secondary 

 Species. Minn. Bot. Studies, 2:19. 1898. 



