Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Botanical Features of North American Deserts
Botanical science in its technical and applied branches has reached a stage of development in which it has become plainly evident that adequate progress in research in physiology, in comprehensions of life histories, and in formulating the general principles governing the origin, environic relations and distributional movements of plants may be expected only by experimental methods in the field or in actual contact with the types of plants under consideration under normal environmental conditions.
In no part of the subject is this so imperative as in the study of the xerophytic and highly specialized forms characteristic of the desert regions of the world, which comprise a total area equal to that of a large continent. The aridity, widely ranging temperatures of soil and air, physical and chemical properties of the soils, conditions of insolation and radio-activity, together with the special forces modifying distribution, furnish a set of conditions not easily duplicated by the regulation of the artificial climates of glass-houses and not adequately represented by pre served material in herbaria and other collections. A European botanist of ability scarcely lays down his work at the end of a life of zeal and indus try devoted to the study of the cacti under cultivation in a climate entirely foreign to them, when an examination of these peculiar forms in their native habitats reveals the necessity for a complete repetition of the entire investigation.
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