THE PROBLEMS OF ECOLOGY 197 



terms of the earlier plant geography, or else some recent initial date 

 would have to be fixed, and this would give great and perhaps unfair 

 prominence to the works which happen to have been published at or 

 shortly after that date. It has been found difficult enough for sys- 

 tematists to arrive at an agreement regarding this matter of an initial 

 date, even in regard to authors of the rather remote past. It would 

 be much harder for ecologists to make such a decision concerning 

 a literature which is still chiefly of living authors. But, even if this 

 matter of an original date could be harmoniously settled, the prin- 

 ciple of priority would be a bad one. It would mean, not that the 

 most fit, maturely considered, carefully discussed, and well defined 

 term should be adopted, but that chance expression which happened 

 to be used when the idea was first glimpsed. Furthermore, the matter 

 of doubtful and partial synonymy of terms would present great diffi- 

 culties in any such plan. Even aided by their far more formal 

 descriptions and carefully preserved type-specimens, systematists 

 often find synonymy almost impossible to unravel. Let this be a 

 warning to ecologists. 



Although this problem of terminology is so difficult that it should 

 be taken very seriously, it need not be disheartening to the ecologist. 

 The compilation and precise definition of a few hundred appropriate 

 Latin terms with their vernacular equivalents in the more important 

 European languages should not present a task of insurmountable 

 difficulty for a well-chosen international commission, and would do 

 wonders towards a solution of the trouble. The task is in no way 

 comparable to that imposed by the two or three hundred thousand 

 names with which systematic botany is weighted down. 



During the brief course of its existence the progress of ecology both 

 in the organization of earlier observations and in the discovery of 

 a host of new facts has been flatteringly rapid. Of late, however, there 

 has been a little cooling of enthusiasm, a barely perceptible tendency 

 toward reaction, a slight question whether the subject of ecology will 

 fulfill the promise of its hitherto conspicuous development. This 

 feeling has been, if I rightly understand it, that the striking general- 

 izations have now been made and the most accessible facts observed; 

 that for its further progress ecology must now pass to details, and 

 that these details will be found to have been already discovered and 

 recorded to a considerable extent by the anatomist, physiologist, and 

 systematist. 



With this view 7 1 have no great sympathy. It is quite true that the 

 ecologist has now reached a period of detail work in which results 

 will come more slowly and be less spectacular, but still the point of 

 view of ecology is admirably distinct, and the problems of the subject 

 are endless. 



In the first place, let us consider the division of vegetation into 



