198 ECOLOGY 



life-zones, plant formations, plant societies, etc. Who will say that 

 this highly interesting work of the ecologist is approaching completion? 

 His scheme as yet is but an outline map, filled out only in a few isolated 

 areas. Great reaches of territory have been wholly unexamined. Ad- 

 mirable work has been done locally. Even considerable tracts, espe- 

 cially in Europe, have been examined in detail, and the results brought 

 together in Engler and Drude's noble work, Die Vegetation der Erde. 

 Warming, Schimper, Goebel, and others have extended ecological 

 work to portions of the tropics of both hemispheres. In our own 

 region there are many examples of critical work on restricted areas, 

 as, for instance, Mr. Kearney's study of the Dismal Swamp and its 

 environment, Professor Ganong's observations on the vegetation 

 about the Bay of Fundy, our chairman's studies in Minnesota, 

 Pound and Clement's organized presentation of the phytogeography 

 of Nebraska, and Professor Cowles's interesting examination of the 

 southern borders of Lake Michigan. Yet let any one who doubts 

 ecological opportunity take a map of the world and note what an 

 exceedingly small fraction of its surf ace has been seen by the eye of the 

 ecologist, and what vast fields are still awaiting examination. There 

 is not one of our states, even the smaller and more thoroughly exam- 

 ined Eastern ones, which does not offer to the plant geographer mater- 

 ials for monographic study and a volume as full of new information 

 and valuable records as the phytogeography of Nebraska already 

 mentioned. Just beyond the limits of our country is the great expanse 

 of British America, readily accessible, healthful in climate, with a 

 rich flora, taxonomically well explored and recorded by an indefat- 

 igable government naturalist, but offering for the most part virgin 

 soil to the ecologist. Mexico, of which now even the remoter parts 

 can be reached by rail, is a country of boundless floral wealth. With 

 enormous mountains, wide plateaus, low tropical jungles, and exten- 

 sive deserts, it offers in relatively close proximity an astonishing 

 diversity of climate from arctic to torrid and from the parching dry- 

 ness of arid sands to the most dense and oppressive moisture of the 

 tropics. It possesses a vegetation far more varied in character and 

 probably more rich in number of species than all the rest of the North 

 American continent. Each mountain and valley seems to have its 

 individual flora. To date, perhaps half a dozen trained ecologists 

 have made hasty trips through small portions of Mexico. In their 

 hurried records they have accomplished only the slightest beginning 

 upon the varied and seemingly endless problems which the country 

 offers. Although more difficult of access, Central and South America 

 offer no less of ecological diversity and interest. Surely the unex- 

 plored territory on our own continent alone offers the ecologist the 

 work of a century. 



But it is by no means the case that these hitherto unexamined 



