CURRENT LITERATURE: 
BOOK REVIEWS. 
A new treatise on ecology. 
THE impetus to a study of ecology as an integral part of botany, coordinate 
with morphology and physiology, dates back to Warming’s £cological plant 
Seography, published only four years ago. The rapidity with which this new 
field of study is developing is shown by the large number of special treatises 
which have appeared since Warming’s work. This latest work of Schimper’ 
is calculated to lead another great advance, and may be said probably to 
mark the beginning of a second epoch in the pursuit of ecological investiga 
tion. 
Schimper, like Warming, is not a narrow specialist, but has made value 
able additions to our knowledge in many fields of botanical research. His 
studies in morphology, cytology, physiology, taxonomy, and ecology have 
peculiarly fitted him to take up an immense work of this sort in a thorou 
scientific manner. The result of his labors is a volume of nearly goo page, 
a veritable compendium of ecological knowledge, systematized and_brought 
up to date. In the preface the author says that the cue for ecological study 
was given by the study of plants in extreme conditions, since only there #* 
the effects of environment strongly marked and easily understood. apse 
investigations in the tropics, and above all the studies of Haberlandt, Wiesi® 
and others at Buitenzorg, have given a great impetus to the study of - 
Schimper appeals for a polar laboratory, so as to study the extreme but io 
tively simple effects of an arctic environment. of 
The general divisions of Schimper’s Plant geography resemble wera 
Warming. First, the ecological factors are treated; water, heat, light i 
Soil, animals. Then there is a discussion of formations and associations 
Seneral. Over three fourths of the work is taken up with a detailed desc?” 
tion of the formations of the various zones and regions, the tropical, aad 
ate, and arctic zones, the mountains and the waters. 
‘WaRMING, EUGEN: Plantesamfund. Grundtrik af den dkologiske Plante: 
Seografi. Kjébenhavn. 1895. See Bor. GAZ. 22:173. 1896 
95 73 ae undlagt 
* SCHIMPER, A. F, W.: Pflanzengeographie auf physiologis Y ; Tale 
Mit 502 als Tafeln oder in den Text gedruckten Abbildungen in a Gusts? 
. Lichtdruck und 4 geographischen Karten. 8vo. pp. xviii +876 ete 
ischer. 1898. Brosch. Jf 27; geb. M 30. [wanch 
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