This was the fact pointed out by Möbius when he studied the oyster and came to see that it must be studied not in isolation but as a member of a community, association of animals, or a biocœnosis, as he called these interrelated organisms. These facts are mentioned, as examples from a vast number that are recorded, to show that our applied or economic zoölogy and entomology are _fundamentally more closely related to associational ecology_ than to any other phase of zoölogy, and to suggest that it would be to the great advantage of the students of such problems if they clearly understood this relation. This is also an argument for the ecological organization of a vast number of natural history surveys, because the associational grouping of observations and responses gives the most intimate knowledge of the life of animals in the network of their environmental relations. In addition to the balance of nature which is found within the small associational units there are the larger ones of considerable geographic extent, which the students of faunal or floral problems frequently call zones or distinct regions. Some of these are distinct ecological units, whose _dynamic status_ should be determined, so that we may know and understand whether it is in a condition of stress, a process of adjustment, or one of relative equilibrium or balance. Under present conditions in what direction does it tend to move? At what rate? The non-ecological surveys have not put these questions or worked deliberately toward a goal which will answer them. For any comprehensive study of this character we need to have determined what may be considered as a _biotic base_, optimum, or balance, toward which relations under given conditions tend, and at which an equilibrium will become established (The Auk, 1908, Vol. XXV, p. 125). Such facts underlie all of the problems involved in the interpretation of climax biotic associations, and their application by man. Cook (1909, Bull. 145, Bur. Plant Industry, U. S. Dept. Agriculture, pp. 7, 8) has expressed similar relations as follows: “Unless we can form a definite idea of the original conditions we cannot expect to judge of their influence on primitive man, nor can we determine what effects man has had upon the vegetation and other natural conditions. We need what might be called a bionomic base line, an idea of the conditions which existed before man came upon the scene, the conditions which would again supervene if the human inhabitants were withdrawn.”