1903] VEGETATION OF THE BAY OF FUNDY MARSHES 449 
form in which we can make ecological use of them. Some 
advance has been made in this direction by such curves as Drude 
uses in his Hercynische Florenbezirk (p. 71), but these need fur- 
ther development. In the study of the physics of the soil, how- 
ever, the ecological importance of which is becoming constantly 
more manifest, it is very obvious that, despite the rapid advances 
now being made, the methods of investigating and of represent- 
ing the facts are still far from developed and wholly insufficient 
for ecological uses. The extension of knowledge in this direc- 
tion is, I believe, the greatest desideratum of ecology for the 
near future. In thus emphasizing the deficiencies of our 
knowledge of the physics of the plant’s environment from the 
ecological point of view, I would not underrate the positive 
knowledge we have, which is considerable. But it is notable 
that this knowledge is of a very general sort and not expressible 
in definite ecological form, as shown by the general and even 
hazy way in which it is commonly stated in current ecologi- 
cal literature, including the present paper. In fact, vague gen- 
eralization and nimble guessing (much of it, no doubt, good 
guessing, but still guessing) are more characteristic of the phy- 
sical part of our current ecological literature than is precise 
Statement ; and the expressions ‘‘ probably,” ‘‘doubtless,” ‘‘in a 
general way,” form a considerable part of present ecological 
language. All this is evidence that in our ecological discussions 
we have reached about the limit of possible advance with our 
present knowledge of the physics of the environment and of 
how to use the knowledge we have. Indeed, this point was 
reached some time ago, and much of recent ecological literature 
has been so barren of real advance as to bring upon ecology a 
reproach which it must be admitted it largely deserves. This is 
the more unfortunate since even the methods of ecological 
description have not substantially improved. I can say this 
with the greater frankness since my own study herewith pre- 
sented so obviously reflects the prevailing formalism and defi- 
ciencies in this respect, though I have made some attempt to 
improve at least the method of description of the vegetation. 
There can be no question, I believe, that further substantial eco- 
