166 BOTANICAL GAZETTE [MARCH 
Very properly the first work of the new period along dynamic 
lines was done in France; in 1825 DuREAU DE LA MALLE (4) pub- 
lished the first paper which gave the results of a careful study of 
plant succession involving the observations of a number of years. 
His work was done mainly in cut-over areas of forest, and no work 
done since greatly surpasses it in accuracy and thoroughness. 
The marvelous clear-sightedness of DurEAU DE LA MALLE is well 
shown in the title of his chief contribution, which (in English 
rendering) is: ‘Memoir on alternation or on alternative succession 
in the reproduction of plant species living in association (sociélé)— 
is it a general law of nature?”’ DurREAU DE LA MALLE (not STEEN- 
STRUP, as frequently supposed) first used the term succession in 
the present sense; probably he was the first also to use the term 
society as an expression of plant grouping. The year 1845 is a 
noteworthy one’ because it was then that E>DwArD FORBES gave 
a short paper (6) before the British Association, opening up an 
entirely new line of study, namely, the interpretation of past 
geographic features by the present. He was the first to under- 
stand the significance of endemism in relation to previous con- 
nections between islands and continents that now are isolated. 
In 1841 a great advance was‘made by the Danish geologist 
STEENSTRUP (5), who discovered the possibility of using the fossils 
of the immediate (i.e., postglacial) past as a means of interpreting 
the climatic changes and the correlated vegetation changes of 
recent epochs. VAUPELL, a student of STEENSTRUP, but more 
botanically inclined, applied his ideas in detail (7, 9), and in the 
years between 1851 and 1863 gave to the world his famous account 
of the postglacial development of Danish vegetation, showing that 
the birch was the chief early pioneer, and that later it was followed 
in turn by the pine and the oak, and finally by the beech, which 
dominates today. From 1856 to 1859 REISSEK (8) worked out 
the dynamical development of the vegetation on the islands of the 
Danube. In 1876 GremBicu (10) seemed to realize the actuality 
of cycles of vegetation. In 188: Hutt, a Finnish botanist, made 
the first comprehensive study of succession (11) as it is now taking 
place in a given region, and he was the first to recognize that a 
comparatively large number of pioneer plant associations later 
