The Outdoor Botanist. By A. R. Horwood, (T, Fisher Unwin.
188. 1895 Professor Warming of-Copen- hagen published the first comprehensive work on that branch. of botany which has come to be called "Ecology," and four years after A. F. W. Schimper applied ecological methods to the study of plant geography. Ecology is practically the biology or natural history of plants, and it discusses " how plants . . . adjust their forms and modes of behaviour to actually operating factors, such as the amounts of available water, heat, light, nutriment and so forth." It differs from the older natural history, such as Charles Darwin knew of, in that it is approached in a more critical spirit and aims at a quantitative statement of results. This science, popularized in America by Clements and in this country mostly through the energies of Tansley and Oliver, is the subject-matter of this volume. It, considers the collection of specimens, field botany and survey work, the ways in which plants affect scenery, and that interesting. but elusive branch of the subject—phonology or the connexion between the phenomena of plant life and the weather. The book should prove a useful and stimulating, but not an entirely satisfactory, introduction to the more advanced standard works.
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