Ramaley • The Growth of a Science 



poor soil suggests some doubts of the 

 phenomenon. 



To return to our main theme, the 

 growth of the science of ecolog}': by 

 the close of the nineteenth centur}' the 

 various natural branches of biolog}' as 

 we now know them had become recog- 

 nized, and specialists had taken the 

 place of the all 'round students of a 

 former day. There appeared men and 

 women devoted to form and structure 

 —especially the finer microscopic struc- 

 ture—of living things (these people we 

 call morphologists ) ; others, the physi- 

 ologists, studied life processes. Physiol- 

 ogy in the early part of the nineteenth 

 century had lagged far behind mor- 

 phology for lack of sound organic 

 chemistry on which to build. The 

 German chemist Wohler, however, in 

 his epoch-making synthesis of urea, in 

 1828, threw into the discard the old 

 notion that organic compounds are 

 always the result of life processes. He 

 produced, it will be remembered, from 

 ammonium cyanate of inorganic origin, 

 the well-known substance urea, a char- 

 acteristic animal product— and soon 

 organic chemistry began its wonderful 

 growth which continues to the present 

 day. 



Besides the morphologists and the 

 physiologists there were the taxono- 

 mists, or classifiers. They were not a 

 new group, for they were disciples of the 

 great Linnaeus, most renowned natural- 

 ist of the times just preceding Dar\vin. 

 But besides continuing their former 

 work of mere describing and classify- 

 ing, the taxonomists now became in- 

 terested in geographical distribution 

 and, following Darwin, interested also 

 in the histor)^ of life— evolution. Taxon- 

 omists are the great conservators of 

 knowledge— we must classify, else all is 

 confusion. 



With the opening of the twentieth 

 centur)' a trend toward synthesis be- 

 came manifest, the subjects of genetics 



27 



and ecology acting to bring together 

 diverse interests. It is seen that biology 

 agreed with other sciences in having 

 first a period of general accumulation 

 of facts. The second period in biolog- 

 ical development was one of specializa- 

 tion into narrow fields, each research 

 group working without thought of 

 others, and only the evolution doctrine 

 of Darwin to draw them together. 



****** 



One of the foundation conceptions 

 of ecology is that of zonation, illus- 

 trated in simple form by a freshwater 

 pond or lake, and its environs. Within 

 the water are fishes and pondweeds; 

 near the shore are sandpipers, frogs, 

 salamanders, snails, cat-tails, and bul- 

 rushes; around the pond is an encircling 

 zone of marsh grasses and sedges with 

 meadow-mice and mosquitoes, then 

 another circum-area of flowering herbs, 

 grasshoppers, meadow grass, and 

 meadowlarks. Such ecological zones, or 

 belts, or associations are usually named 

 for the dominant plants in each; so 

 this pond exhibits a pondweed zone, a 

 bulrush zone, a marsh zone, and a 

 meadow zone. The ecologist, in his 

 study of zonation, is not content 

 merely to list these communities. He 

 wants to know why they exist, and so 

 he studies the climate, the soil and its 

 temperature and moisture-content, the 

 physiographic features, as slope and 

 exposure. But zonation is not limited 

 to the plants and animals around a frog 

 pond. Zones depending on differences 

 in climate are recognized in our moun- 

 tain countr}^ where there is a basal zone 

 of grassland, higher up a montane zone 

 of forest, and at the top an alpine zone 

 of grassland again— albeit a different 

 grassland from that at the base of the 

 mountains, for in the alpine zone the 

 vegetation is sparse, and flowering herbs 

 are more conspicuous than grasses. 



