QUADRATS 163 
gation of invasion year by year, and especially for succession, the method 
of permanent quadrats is imperative, and the denuded quadrat an invaluable 
aid. Changes, which would otherwise be incompletely observed and im- 
perfectly recorded, are followed in the minutest detail and recorded with 
perfect accuracy. 
200. Possible objections. The use of the quadrat has led to the criticism 
that it is needlessly detailed and thorough, and that, after all, the space 
covered is but a minute part of the entire formation. The first objection is 
one that has also been urged against the use of instruments of precision in 
the habitat. It is always brought forward by those who have not used in- 
struments, and as witnesses they are of necessity incompetent. No one who 
is familiar with the instrument or the quadrat by actual practice has felt 
that the methods based upon them were too thorough. In no case has the 
writer ever listed or mapped a quadrat without discovering some new fact 
or relation, or clearing up an old question. It can not be denied that quadrat 
methods require both time and patience, but this is true of any kind of re- 
search work that is at all worth while. Every ecologist, moreover, that 
has the interests of his field at heart and deprecates the present slipshod 
work, will appreciate the necessity of methods which seem like drudgery 
to the mere dabbler. 
The second objection, that the quadrat is at best but a small bit of the 
area under investigation, seems at first to be a valid one. It can not be 
gainsaid that the actual space studied is insignificant as compared with the 
whole formation ; still, it must be obvious that even a single quadrat can 
add at least some facts of value, which can never be obtained by the 
best of general methods. Furthermore, if the formation be an actual 
and not an imaginary one, a single quadrat will be in some measure repre- 
sentative. In the more homogeneous ones, it will have much the same 
value that a type specimen bears to the species established upon it. In 
formations which are less uniform, its value is correspondingly reduced, so 
that in formations which show marked zones, consocies, or patches, it 
becomes necessary to locate a quadrat in each. In the matter of representa- 
tion alone, the graphic method of the quadrat map with its close-focus detail 
photograph, is far superior to anything that can be obtained by the ordinary 
description and photograph. Finally, the scientific study and recording 
of succession, and particularly of competition, is an impossibility without 
the aid of the permanent and denuded quadrat. The stoutest champion of 
the practice of walking through a formation, and jotting down impressions, 
can not avoid their use if he would attack these problems, and, once familiar 
with the quadrat, his objections to the drudgery of thoroughness will 
soon vanish. 
