254 Committee for the Study of British Vegetation. 
THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE FOR THE SURVEY AND 
STUDY OF BRITISH VEGETATION. 
A BRIEF account of the work of this organisation during 1905 
may serve to mark the progress in this country of that side 
of Botany indicated in its title. 
The second meeting was held at 3, Taviton Street, London, on 
March 17th; the third meeting at Liverpool on November 18th 
and 19th was held partly at the Exchange Hotel and partly in the 
Hartley Botanical Laboratories of the University. Every one of 
the ten members has attended one or both of these meetings, in 
spite of a distribution so wide as Portsmouth, Dublin and Dundee. 
The programme for each meeting was drawn up after consulting 
each member, hence the Agenda may be regarded as fairly 
representative of topics and difficulties frequently arising in the 
development of the subject, and therefore of some general interest 
to botanists. The reasons for the formation of this Committee 
have already been stated in these pages (Jan. 1905), and a year’s 
experience has demonstrated the need of organising, so as to ensure 
that future work may be progressive and still correlated. The 
principle topics of discussion and decisions are grouped for 
convenience. 
Scale of Maps. The relative merits of the different scales of 
ordnance survey maps have already been compared, 1 the “ six-inch ” 
maps being recommended in most cases for field-records. As 
regards published maps, it was resolved ‘‘that it is not desirable to 
limit maps in published papers to any definite scale, but that a 
scale should be used proportionate to the features which the map is 
intended to show.” This resolution was necessary, because some of 
the maps have been published on the half-inch, while others appear 
on the one-inch scale. In the latter the vegetation has been analysed 
into smaller elements, and publication on the lesser scale would 
have insufficiently displayed the observations made. The Com-' 
mittee does not at present favour the fixing of any definite scale, 
since this would destroy the elasticity necessary in the present 
experimental phase of botanical survey. 
Nomenclature of Units. A series of resolutions relating to the 
use of the terms Formation, Association, Zone, and Region are 
summarised in Pamphlet I. These, however, are provisional and 
subject to the conclusions of the International Committee appointed 
to standardise the nomenclature of plant geography. This body 
met during the International Congress of Botanists at Vienna this 
year. A member of the Committee (Mr. T. W. Woodhead) was 
present, and submitted a report to the Liverpool meeting. It 
appears that the needs of the nomenclature for systematic botany 
fully occupied the time available, and that no definite decisions 
were arrived at. The Committee for Plant Geography was re¬ 
appointed to continue its work till the next meeting of the Inter¬ 
national Congress in 1910. The name of the Secretary of this (the 
British) Committee was added to the International Committee, so 
1 “ Suggestions for Beginning Survey Work on Vegetation.” New 
Phytologist, April, 1905 ; this (re-printed as Pamphet I.) 
may be obtained from the Secretary (\V. G. Smith, Uni¬ 
versity of Leeds) or from the Editor of the New Phytologist 
post free 3d. 
