Tvio authorities on this subject may be quoted here: Ritter (1917: 403) 

 says, "Itie future's progress in the biological sciences will be accomplished 

 by a far closer, more vital interdependence between researches out in nature 

 and researches in the laboratory." Roosevelt (1917: 11) states, "It is 

 essential to recognize that the best scientific men must largely work in 

 the great out-of-doors laboratory of nature. It is only such outdoors work 

 which will give us the chance to interpret aright the laboratory obseinrations." 



EQUIMSNT 



Equipment needed for field investigations of habits of mammals varies all 

 the way from tools that are available almost everywhere to the complicated and 

 expensive instruments necessary to the solution of more difficult problems 

 (3ailey 1912) . Pick, shovel, ax or large hatchet, trowel or large spoon, brush 

 cutter, grass cutter, tapeline, sketch pad, coordinate paper, field glasses, 

 compass, camera, and writing materials usually suffice for beginning studies. 



TEE MODERN APPROACH 



Less thorough modes of inquiry should give way as rapidly as practicable 

 to intensive investigations of quantitative character. There is great need 

 for the development of the ecologic method of approach in the study of the 

 animal and its environment. Field plot or quadrat methods should be combined 

 with observations on the behavior of animals under confinement, the whole 

 based on a thorough knowledge of normal field conditions over wide areas. No 

 attempt is made here to do more than refer to the development of this important 

 side of the work, with the permanent field stations, specially trained personnel, 

 and comparatively elaborate equipment that it implies. Development of new 

 methods of study is one of the most important and promising lines of work in 

 the, entire field. 



Ihe increasing use of the camera in the study of habits is particularly 

 desirable. Chapman (1900: 1) thus states the case for the scientific value of 

 bird photography: "There are certain matters, such as a bird's song, its time 

 of migration, etc., which must be set forth with the pen; there are others, 

 such as its haunts, nesting site, nest, eggs, the appearance and development 

 of its young, where the camera is so far ahead of the pen in its power of 

 graphic representation that it is a waste of time to use the former when cir- 

 cumstances permit the utilization of the latter." 



Though the camera is much less used in connection with mammal study, 

 perhaps because of the nocturnal habits of some of these and the lesser acces- 

 sibility of their haunts and homes, its value in this province can scarcely 

 be overestimated. Photographs should be obtained of living animals in charac- 

 teristic attitudes, of specimens (especially those freshly killed) of animals 

 in live traps (fig. 1), of characteristic food plants or other vegetation, and 

 of noteworthy features of topography or environment. Photographic record is 

 desirable also of tracks of animals, their systems of runways, beds or shelters, 

 nests, piles of stored food or "hay," feces, claw and tooth marks on trees, 

 cropped vegetation, and general habitat. Present day animal portrait work is 

 of such high quality that ordinarily it will not be possible for the biologist 



