70 
The N.Z. Journal of Science and Technology. 
[Mar. 
THE IMPORTANCE OF PLANT ECOLOGY WITH 
REGARD TO AGRICULTURE. 
By L. Cockayne, Ph.D., F.L.S., F.R.S. 
That agriculture, if it is to improve, must take full advantage of the 
methods and discoveries of those branches of modern botany which 
specially affect it hardly needs asserting. The yield of meat or butter- 
fat per acre is primarily a matter of the plant-covering of the farm. The 
scientific names of grasses, clovers, and other agricultural forage plants 
have for a long time been in the possession of agriculture. Also, by means 
of selection, hybridization, and other methods, forms of well-known 
economic plants have been made by the plant-breeder, purposely or by 
accident, possessing increased agricultural value. But when it comes to 
a knowledge of the actual requirements of each plant with regard to light, 
heat, moisture, soil, &c., in order to attain its maximum economic develop¬ 
ment, there is usually nothing definite to go upon. Even in a matter so 
fundamental as the extent to which quite common species are eaten by 
stock there is usually no exact knowledge. 
The farmer, however, is not alone concerned with the properties and 
potentialities of the different plants, bad and good, of his farm. To him 
their combinations when growing side by side are of the utmost interest. 
Hardly ever does he grow, much as he might desire to do so, a crop of one 
species of plant alone. His crops, be they grain, or root, or pasture, are 
always mixtures, so that he is not only concerned with the actual require¬ 
ments of each species, but with the behaviour of these when brought into 
that competition with one another which is largely a 44 struggle ” for food 
and light. 
A more accurate knowledge than is at present available regarding the 
maximum and minimum requirements of each economic plant, and its 
behaviour when growing in company with other plants and animals, would, 
if properly applied, probably improve the agricultural yield in direct pro¬ 
portion to such increase in knowledge. Such scientific research is not 
the farmer’s business, although he might well be expected to find some 
part of the means towards its accomplishment; his proper work is to 
make his farm yield its maximum output, using the most approved 
methods, but with due regard to not exhausting the soil. Better methods 
still, as yet unknown, there must be, but for the discovery of these agri¬ 
culture must rely upon scientific research, which, with a full knowledge 
of what is already known as a starting-point, will ultimately provide the 
methods for the improved farming of the future. 
The class of research, mentioned above, which deals with living plants 
and their relation to their surroundings, and which gathers its data from 
actual observations in the field, is the newest branch of botanical science, 
and has received the name “ecology.”* Ecology is yet in its infancy, it 
is true, but it is already a healthy child, loudly making known its wants 
and giving abundant promise of rapid growth into splendid maturity. 
It was at the beginning of the 44 seventies ” of the last century that 
ecology, as we now know it, came into the botanical world, with its 
intensive study of the living plant not merely in the unnatural conditions 
of the laboratory, or even the garden, but where Nature had planted it. 
* In this article, where the word “ ecology ” is used without any qualifying word it 
means only plant ecology, though properly the term refers to animals also. 
