THE BIOLOGICAL REVIEW. 37 



BOTANY 



In reading over Mr. Frederick V. Coville's report of the 

 Death Valley Expedition, I was very much pleased with his 

 definition of the terms, range, locality, station and habitat. 

 They are often misunderstood by botanists, and many have 

 widely various meanings for them. For the benefit of those 

 who have not access to his report, I take the liberty of quoting 

 his remarks, as follows : 



" In a discussion of the principles of plant distribution it is 

 necessary that each term technically employed shall have a 

 well-defined and uniform meaning. Among those words which 

 have been used by various writers with great looseness, there 

 are four which are of especial importance to us, range, locality, 

 station, and habitat. One has merely to refer to our common 

 botanical textbooks and dictionaries to find the lack of clearness 

 in the definitions of these terms, while an attempt to use the 

 words as defined impresses one with the nece-sity of review- 

 ing their meaning. 



" Of these words the one which has historic precedence is 

 habitat. It has been used at various times to express the 

 different meanings which are now conveyed by all four words, 

 and from this fact an unfortunate confusion has arisen. 

 Another circumstance that has contributed to the cloudy under- 

 standing of these terms is that a technical meaning, not in 

 accord with its popular use, has been ascribed to one of them. 

 The word referred to is station. This term is sometimes 

 employed to express the kind of place in which a plant occurs ; 

 but its historic use in the language is to indicate position 

 merely. 



" The meanings that should logically be attached to these 

 words are as follows : 



" Range — The range over which a type spontaneously grows. 



" Locality — The approximate geographic position of an indi- 

 vidual specimen. 



