COMMITTEE OF BRITISH ASSOCIATION.
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compared with those taken in another, and similar. Thus a general list of plants
representative of the association or area is finally arrived at. In a similar way
are built up the lists of plants for all associations, and information obtained
concerning their biological conditions.
" It will readily be seen that by our methods the plant species inhabiting a
district are arranged in the associations as they are actually found, and not, as
is almost invariably the case in local floras, in the groupings of the Natural
Orders. In certain ways this alternative point of view is very advantageous,
alike to the beginner whom it is sought to interest in Nature study as to the
maturer naturalist, who can find in the solution of oecological problems motive
for endless study and enjoyment. There is a danger of thinking that the robbing
a countryside of its rarest plants, to be carried home, dried, labelled, and buried
in sheets of paper, is the beginning and end of botany. The present method
puts no premium on this; the commoner plants are the most observed, and yet
there is a place in our scheme for the rarest. By regarding the trees, shrubs,
flowers, grasses, mosses and moulds as individuals of one community, dependent
in a variety of ways upon one another, rather than as items meet to be
labelled, and put into compartments, one is led to study the biology of the
vegetable kingdom, to use the microscope, and through it to see visions of a
thousand problems, some answered, many awaiting answer. And yet the syste-
matic side of the science is not obscured."
Here in Essex, it seems to me, there is room for attempting
to carry out such a vegetation-survey as that commenced in the
north. Our Club has contributed materially to a knowledge of
the flora of the county; but the new method is to view the local
plants in their relation to soil, climate, and other physical con-
ditions, which are controlling features in plant-distribution. A
map of Essex showing the vegetation-districts sketched out on
the new lines has yet to be constructed. Not that the floristic
method of plant-study is in any way to be displaced ; it is simply
to be supplemented by a general view of the distribution of
vegetable life, capable of cartographical expression.
A short communication was sent to Southport by our
esteemed member, Mr. Holmes, calling attention to certain
omissions in the new edition of some of the Ordnance Survey
Maps, on the 6in. scale. On the older map there occurs at one
spot in Greenwich Park the words "Roman Remains," and at a
neighbouring place just outside the park, the map gives the
information, "Roman Remains found here." In the newer map
of the same district (edition of 1894-96) these words' are omitted.
The curtailment of any archaeological information known to be
well founded, is a matter to which local societies may fairly call
attention in relation to the maps of their respective localities.