Abstract
FROM the cultural point of view, plant life and A all that it implies may be regarded as the foundation of a vast extent of human activity and the basis of a large and essential part of every human environment. Because neither we nor the animals could persist without plant life, it follows that much of the present distribution of these organisms over the face of the earth can only be understood in terms of the plant life either of the present or the past. Even man's industrial activities have been largely localized and in part determined by the geographical distribution of vegetation, whether it be that of the forests, of perhaps 280 million years ago, which gave origin to our coal deposits, or the vast extent of grasslands that have determined the location of pastoral communities.
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Salisbury, E. Modern Study of Plants in Relation to Education*. Nature 140, 707–709 (1937). https://doi.org/10.1038/140707a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/140707a0