24 ECOLOGY 



Francis Ramaley 



The Growth of a Science 



Reprinted with the permission of the Univer- 

 sity of Colorado Press from the University of 

 Colorado Studies 26(3):3-14, 1940. 



As any field of human knowledge is their neighbors, and the inorganic and 

 cultivated it broadens far beyond its organic worlds in which they find 

 original confines. While Aristotle, themselves. And so also of plants— 

 twcntv-four hundred years ago, could columbines and orchids do not grow on 

 encompass all learning of his day, and arid plains, nor do buffalo grass and 

 even Albertus Magnus, many centuries prickly pears inhabit the rain-blessed 

 later, could be looked upon as a man mountains. Animals and plants are 

 who knew everything, it is now but the environed by climate, by lakes, rivers, 

 veriest commonplace that no one can mountains, and deserts, and by com- 

 be master of more than a small part petitors for a place in the sun. Animals 

 of any serious discipline. I propose to have enemies seeking them for food, 

 trace for you briefly the growth, not but other creatures, especially of the 

 of one of the main fields of knowledge, plant kingdom, afford them food or 

 but of a small part of one of these — give shelter. In like manner one kind 

 the development of old-time natural of plant will "help" another. Without 

 history into the ecology of the present the shade of trees where would be the 

 day. livid green of mossy banks and the deli- 



You will forgive me, if, as an old cate odor of sweet fern? 



teacher, I remind you that the word But here we must remind ourselves 



ecology (e-c-o-l-o-g-y) is akin, in ori- that while we human beings are able 



gin, to the word economy, and hence to modify our environment, as when 



has reference to the house or house- we construct a house, build a fire, or 



hold. It has to do with the habits of put on an overcoat, there is very little 



animals, the kinds of houses or shelters that plants and animals can do to 



which they « make use of, their food, alter theirs, save by migration. It is an 



