108 



The Plant World. 



Whili teachers in the high schools and in the grades, as 

 well as advanced students and instructors in colleges, have 

 ample opportunity lor study at the sea coast, there has been in 

 the past little to draw them to the mountains. The present 

 interest in ecology, which brings so much importance to field 

 work, has not been fully met by the seaside laboratories. The 

 Tolland laboratory should serve those who have not been able 

 to study in mountain districts and to whom plant geography- 

 is little more than a name. 



g The hot, arid plains or the alpine heights are within a few 

 hours ride by train. All of the life zones are so compressed 

 that one may walk from Tolland in the montane zone down the 

 valley for three miles to a typical foothill district, or up the val- 

 ley for the same distance into the sub-alpine forest. A ride of 

 one hour by train takes the student to the plains, while an hour 

 and a half is sufficient to reach the top of the snowy range, or 

 Continental Divide. Either of these excursions takes the trav- 

 eler to a region as different from that of Tolland as Maine is 

 different from South Carolina; while in passing the whole dis- 

 tance from cactus plains to alpine tundra, there are as great 

 changes in the plants as would be seen in a journey all the way 

 from Louisiana to Hudson's Bay. 



Whether we conceive of ecology as the study of adaptations 

 among plants, or as a part of phytogeography, a mountain 

 region is the place to see and to learn the most in the shortest 

 time. For here, and here alone, are great climatic differences 

 in the environment to be seen and studied within easy traveling 

 distance. It is possible to learn more about plant distribution 

 in a few days than could be learned in weeks of travel north and 

 south in the eastern or central states. 



But it is not only for the study of ecology that the Rocky 

 Mountains excel. For plant anatomy and taxonomy they offer 

 most alluring opportunities to the investigator or to the beginner. 

 The plants of Colorado are not so well known that illustrated 

 manuals picturing every species are obtainable. Hitherto un- 

 lescribed forms are continually being found and the known 

 distributional limits of species are continually being enlarged. 

 Since almost nothing has been done with microscopic anatomy 

 )f these mountain forms the student can have the satisfaction 



