Makch 25, 1904.] 



SCIENCE. 



493 



listen to such arguments and will endeavor 

 to effect improvements. 



AVhen such methods fail and the parties 

 interested are obdurate, legal methods 

 should be used. The law or ordinance 

 must be carefully drawn and subjected to 

 the best legal criticism before it is tried. 

 'It is better never to have sued than to 

 have sued and lost. ' But if the ordinance 

 does fail, one has profited by experience 

 and the next ordinance will be stronger. 



To sum up the facts and conditions as 

 they have been outlined in this paper it 

 may be said: 



(1) That objectionable smoke from soft 

 coal can readily be prevented; (2) that 

 such prevention will result in a higher effi- 

 ciency and smaller fuel bills; (3) that all 

 new plants should be subject to permits 

 issued by proper city officials; (4) that 

 educational and legal measures combined 

 should be used in cases where the evil al- 

 ready exists; (5) that the control of such 

 work should be in the hands of properly 

 trained engineers who understand the whole 

 subject thoroughly; (6) that the people of 

 each community must see to it that they are 

 protected from this evil as from poor drain- 

 age and dirty streets. 



Chas. H. Benjamin. 



Case School of Applied Science, 

 Cleveland, Ohio, 

 December 15, 1903. 



THE CARDINAL PRINCIPLES OF ECO LOOT* 

 Within recent years that old phase of 

 natural history which is concerned with 

 the adaptations of organisms to their en- 

 vironment has become segregated into a 

 distinct department of study under the 

 name of ecology (oecology, biologic). This 

 separation is unnatural, but it is expedient, 

 and it is likely to result in great advances 

 towards that most important, difficult and 



* Read before the Society for Plant Morphology 

 and Physiology at its Philadelphia meeting, De- 

 cember 29, 1903. 



alluring of scientific ends, the explanation 

 of the raisons d'etre in organic nature. 



As now studied by botanists, ecology is 

 concerned mostly with that synthetic phase 

 of the subject dealing with the interpreta- 

 tion of the physiognomy of vegetation, 

 while comparatively little is being done in 

 the analytic phases which investigate par- 

 ticular features, or elements, of adapta- 

 tion. To such an extent is this the case, 

 in this country at least, that we are ac- 

 customed to use the word 'ecology' as a 

 synonym for 'ecology of the vegetation' or 

 'ecological plant-geography,' a somewhat 

 misleading usage which has been, with 

 some justice, censured. Criticism of the 

 use of the name, however, is of slight ac- 

 count in comparison with the current crit- 

 icism, unpublished -but wide-spread, of the 

 methods of the subject as followed among 

 us. Such criticism arises in part from 

 that ubiquitous human failing which leads 

 us to exalt our own lines of wox'k by in- 

 vidious reflections upon other lines which 

 we do not, or will not, understand; but it 

 is in large part deserved. Ecological pub- 

 lications in America are too often char- 

 acterized by a vast prolixity in compari- 

 son with their real additions to knowledge, 

 by a pretentiousness of statement and 

 terminology unjustified by their real 

 merits, and by a weakness of logic deserv- 

 ing the disrespect they receive. The sub- 

 ject suffers, I fear, from a phase of the 

 'get-rich-quick' spirit. These opinions I 

 can express with the better grace when I 

 hasten to admit that, so far as my OAvn few 

 publications are concerned, I am one of 

 the chief of sinners. I believe it is a fact 

 that, despite our numerous ecological pub- 

 lications, the only material advances made 

 in ecology in this country for some years 

 past are in descriptions of vegetation, in 

 Avhich a considerable body of fact has been 

 accumulated. But in interpretation, the 

 very soul of ecology, we have done little 



