156 



by any one possessed of a manual, a fair knowledge of plants, 

 and a little spare time and perseverance. Some of them are dis- 

 tinctly outdoor problems, while others are of a statistical nature, 

 and can be studied at home in winter and inclement w^eather, with 

 the aid of field notes and a few books. For the amateur who 

 wishes to make his work count the occasional assistance of a 

 person familiar with botanical literature, to prevent duplication 

 of research, is eminently desirable, but that is easily obtained in 

 such a botanical center as New York. 



Botanical field workers have always been inclined to pay 

 too much attention to rarities, like mere curio collectors ; and 

 although it cannot be denied that finding rare plants is one of 

 the botanist's chief pleasures, at the same time we can generally 

 learn more from the common ones. It is really more important 

 to determine what species are most abundant in a given region 

 or plant association than to discover the rarer ones or even to 

 make a complete list. Besides the common and rare plants 

 there is another important category, commonly overlooked 

 because they cannot be collected nor usually recorded in the 

 field ; namely, species which are absent from a given area or 

 habitat and present in similar or neighboring areas. 



In preparing local floras we should not be content with merely 

 enumerating localities and habitats, unless the area is very small 

 or very homogeneous. In a region with geometrical or political 

 boundaries the distribution of each species should be correlated 

 as far as possible with that of the various environmental factors, 

 such as climate, altitude, geology, topography, etc. For instance, 

 in this vicinity Ilex glabra seems to be confined to the coastal 

 plain, Qiicrciis Priiius to hilly or rocky regions, and certain ferns 

 to limestone ; while many species skip the pine-barrens, others 

 do not grow near salt water, etc. 



Most field botanists, especially in the northeastern states, have 

 hitherto studied floristics rather than vegetation. The relations 

 between these two concepts are analogous to those between 

 orthography and grammar, grammar and literature, chronology 

 and history, census statistics and geography, anatomy and phys- 

 iology, or anthropology and sociology. In other words, while 



