262 BOTANICAL GAZETTE [OCTOBER 
Have you the picture before you? A rectangle of veyeta- 
tion stretching down to the rivulet that is lost under the direct 
rays of the summer sun and then on up the slope beyond, all 
framed in by right lines of forest trees and grateful shadows. If 
you have located the clearing from my brief outline you are 
ready to enter in and possess it botanically. If such a piece of 
land, even though it be but a single acre, is close at hand, you 
have a treatise upon vegetable ecology and physiology that con- 
tains no ends of treasures. Not that it bears any long list of 
species, but that it does possess the various conditions that, 
taken in connection with the border land, are more interesting 
than books, for it is the living volume, that vitalized cyclopedia 
of facts and the suggestion of principles, that make plant 
analysis seem tame and useless, save as it may help to catch the 
convenient handle to hold the subject that is undergoing some 
delightful transformation. 
Let that clearing be your field of study day by day. When the 
days are long and the heat is intense make notes, and with speci- 
mens there gathered retreat into the shade of the wood lot upon 
either side. Compare the port of the sun-kissed, and it may be 
sunburned, herb with that of its shaded neighbor of the same 
species. Both were once alike, but the axe of the woodsman has 
let in the full sun upon the one, with drying effect upon the soil 
surroundings. One bears or attempts to bear the burden and 
heat of the day while the other is nursed in broken sunshine and a 
moister soil. 
The Osmunda in the sun has its fronds strict and upright, 
the pinne uplifted and twisted to lessen the direct exposure. In 
the shade the habit is that of some other species, with the 
fronds gracefully curved outward, and the delicate pinne So 
placed as to catch every broken shaft of the sunlight that pene- 
trates the tree tops. The ferns in the open are bleached, while 
those in the shade are deep green; the former are tough and the 
latter delicate. 
Every plant in the clearing that has survived the ordeal of 
the exposure is a study of adaptation, the reason for the change 
