(1) Der schwizerische National-Park (2) Vegetationsentwicklung und Bodenbildung in der alpinen Stufe der Zentralalpen

Abstract

PROBABLY few whose pursuits have not brought them into wide as well as intimate contact with Nature, can realise the extent to which the face of the globe has been modified by the restless activities of the human race. The modifying influence of man is more particularly experienced by the organic film which tends to cover, now thickly, now thinly, those portions of the surface of the earth which are capable of supporting life. Nowhere, perhaps, is this influence more noticeable than in the case of vegetation. For this reason plant ecologists have up to the present tended where possible to select for study the more ‘natural’ types of vegetation, i.e. those least altered by man and his domestic animals. It is gradually coming to be realised, however, that many of the problems of agriculture, dealing as it does with ‘semi-natural’ vegetation such as pastures, as well as with vegetation in its most ‘artificial’ aspect, the crops of arable land, are really ecological problems.

(1) Der schwizerische National-Park.

50 künstlerische Aufnahmen von J. Feuerstein. Pp. iv + 48 Tafeln. (Zürich: Brunner und Co. A.-G., n.d.) n.p.

(2) Vegetationsentwicklung und Bodenbildung in der alpinen Stufe der Zentralalpen.

Von J. Braun-Blanquet unter Mitwirkung von Hans Jenny. (Mém. de la Soc. Helvétique des Sci. Nat. Vol. 63, Mém. 2, 1926.) Pp. viii + 181-349. (Geneva, 1926.)