U    N  W     .   N    E   W     S    FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN NEWS SERVICE, MADISON 6, WISCONSIN
11/24/59  J1                     RELEASE:              Imediately
MADISON, Wis. --In 1836, writing the concluding paragraphs to the journal
describing his five-year voyage around the world in the Beagle, Charles Darwin ex-
pressed his belief that every "traveller should be a botanist, for in all views
plants form the chief embellishment."
A new volume published by the University of Wisconsin Press, "The Vegeta-
tion of Wisconsin" by University botanist John T. Curtis, provides what is--and what
undoubtedly will remain for years to come--the standard sourcebook for everyone in-
terested in the vegetation of Wisconsin and her neighboring states, the forests and
fens, prairies, meadows, and bogs.
Not a guidebook in the usual sense, the volume summarizes the ecological
work of botanists in Wisconsin from the day of Increase Lapham (who published the
first list of plant species found in Wisconsin in the same year Darwin closed his
journal) to the recent work of the University of Wisconsin's Plant Ecology Laboratory,
one of the nation's outstanding centers of botanical research.
Curtis also points out that many of the most cherished traditions regard-
ing land management--fire control, expansion of public hunting grounds, and drainage--
often do not achieve what is expected of them. He outlines some of the questions
which research must answer before effective public policies can be instituted.
The volume is a summary of technical fact, written with a minimum of
technical terms to make the facts available to the serious amateur or student, as
well as the practical land manager, professional forester, wildlife biologist, any-
one concerned with the land and its products whether such interest is "aesthetic or
practical, horticultural or recreational, or otherwise."
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