6 THE FOUNDATION OF ECOLOGY 
9. The evidence from historical development. This extremely brief 
resume of what has been accomplished in the several lines of ecological 
research makes evident the almost complete absence of correlation and of 
system. The whole field not merely lacks system, but it also demands a 
much keener perception of the relative value of the different tendencies 
already developed. It is inevitable from the great number of tyros, and 
of dilettante students of ecology in comparison with the few specialists, that 
the surface of the field should have received all of the attention. It is, 
however, both unfortunate and unscientific that great lines of development 
should be entirely unknown to all but a few. There is no other department 
of botany in which the superficial study of more than half a century ago 
still prevails to the exclusion of better methods, many of which have been 
known for a decade or more. It is clear, then, that the imperative need of 
ecology is the proper coordination of its various points of view, and the 
working out of a definite system which will make possible a ready recogni- 
tion of that which is fundamental and of that which is merely collateral. 
The historical development, as is well understood, can furnish but a slight 
clue to this. It is a fact of common knowledge that the first development 
of any subject is general, and usually superficial also. True values come 
out clearly only after the whole field has been surveyed. For these reasons, 
as will be pointed out in detail later, the newer viewpoints are regarded as 
either the most important or the most fundamental. Experimental ecology 
will throw a flood of light upon plant structure and function, while exact 
methods of studying the habitat are practically certain of universal appli- 
cation in the future. 
PRESENT STATUS OF ECOLOGY 
10. The lack of special training. The bane of the recent development 
popularly known as ecology has been a widespread feeling that anyone can 
do ecological work, regardless of preparation. There is nothing in modern 
botany more erroneous than this feeling. The whole task of ecology is to 
find out what the living plant and the living formation are doing and have 
done in response to definite complexes of -factors, i. e., habitats. In this 
sense, ecology is practically coextensive with botany, and the student of a 
locaf flora who knows a few hundred species is no more competent to do 
ecological work than he is to reconstruct the phylogeny of the vegetable 
kingdom, or to explain the transmission of ancestral qualities. The com- 
prehensive and fundamental character of the subject makes a broad special 
training even more requisite than in more restricted lines of botanical in- 
quiry. The ecologist must first of all be a botanist, not a mere cataloguer 
of plants, and he must also possess a particular training in the special meth- 
