178 OLAF GALLOE 
absolute agreement as regards a fixed terminology for the naming 
of the different kinds of soil, and in addition, if it were possible, 
out in the field, immediately to identify to which category the soil 
belonged which supported the association we were just then in- 
vestigating, then it would be an excellent method consistently to 
name the association after the soil. But this cannot be done, owing 
to the nature of the subject. There does not exist, and will hardly 
ever be created, any descriptive soil-term, which will win universal 
acceptance. Nor will it ever be possible, out in the field to identify 
each kind of soil with any certainty. This requires thorough chemical 
and physical investigations, which must be made in the laboratorv. 
It appears to be far easier to name the association after the 
dominant plants, — when such occur. A beech wood is easy to 
recognize as such, but a “fell-field” (rocky-flat) a “mat-herbage” 
(herb-flat) which are not characterized by any one individual species, 
how are we to know them? 
Here we find ourselves in reality placed before a fundamental 
question in ecology, the definition and naming of the plant- 
association: partly, how we shall precisely define the individual 
association, so that it is recognizable wherever it may be met with 
on the surface of the earth, and may be determined, at any rate, 
with as great certainty as we determine a systematic species: and 
partly, how we shall name it, after the soil, or after dominant 
species of plant, or perhaps after dominant “growth-forms” (see 
Warming and Raunkiær). 
On this question, first and foremost the founder of ecology, E. 
Warming, and afterwards C. Raunkiær, have contended that 
the associations ought to be analyzed with regard to “growth-forms,” 
so that we may thereby define them. What we shall afterwards 
call them is a point of less importance, as different names for 
the same association may be used synonymously, even although a 
uniform nomenclature would facilitate the survey considerably 
when we are occupying ourselves with the systematising of the as- 
sociations. | 
Which classification of the growth-forms of the plant-world we 
are to use, must be dependent on the object we have in view in 
the investigation of the associations. In itself there is nothing to 
prevent our using several different classificalions in the same in- 
vestigation, for instance, we could enumerate the “geophytes,” ‘“‘hemi- 
cryptophytes,” “chamzephytes,” etc. (according to Raunkier’s clas- 
