EDITORIAL. 
THE ESTABLISHMENT Of a biological survey by the Department 
of Agriculture, under a recent act of Congress, should mark the 
beginning of a new era in the botanical field-work of the United 
States. Some work of this kind has been done by the general 
government, and by different institutions, but it has been desul- 
tory and without any general plan. At the head of the new 
survey no more competent man could have been placed than 
Dr. Merriam, for his whole work has tended in this direction and 
his publications have shown a wide grasp of the problems. To 
be made most effective, large cooperation must be obtained 
from local organizations, which will work along definite lines in 
a general plan. The natural allies of the Department will be the 
Experiment Stations already established in every state, but even 
these should not be regarded as adequate. Where state biological 
surveys are organized, these should be associated with the govern- 
ment survey and work under its general direction; and where 
they are not, such organizations should be formed, or the 
biologists of the state should individually associate themselves 
with the general survey. There can be no doubt that abundant 
and important service can be suggested to every worker by Dr. 
Merriam. The new survey should prove a great stimulus to the 
coming generation of botanists, and to the strong movement in 
botany which is impelling them to emerge from herbaria and 
laboratories and to come in contact with the larger problems of 
plant-life. The gradual shifting of the botanical standpoint is 
becoming daily more evident, and the period of mérphology is 
merging into one to be dominated by physiology, not merely the 
chemistry and physics of physiology, but the larger field of 
ecology. 
THE MoveMENT for the appointment of a scientific chief of 
oo of agriculture seems to have received a check, 
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