ECOLOGICAL, BACKGROUND AND GROWTH BEFORE 1900 



17 



made his experiments is shown in the fol- 

 lowing passage (p. 2012) : 



"We put a full-grown Duck (being not then 

 able to procure a fitter) into a Receiver, where- 

 of she fill'd, by our guess, a third part or some- 

 what more but was not able to stand in any 

 easy posture in it; then pumping out the Air, 

 though she seemed at first (which yet I am not 

 too confident of upon a single tryal, ) to have 

 continued somewhat longer than a Hen in her 

 condition would have done; yet within the 

 short space of one minute she appeared much 

 discomposed and between that and the second 

 minute, her struggling and convulsive motions 

 increased so much that, her head also hanging 

 carelessly down, she seemed to be just at the 

 point of death; from which we presently res- 

 cued her by letting the Air in upon her: So 

 that, this Duck being reduced in our Receiver 

 to a gasping condition within less than two 

 minutes it did not appear that, notwithstanding 

 the peculiar contrivance of nature to enable 

 these water-Birds to continue without respira- 

 tion for some time under water, this Duck was 

 able to hold out considerably longer than a 

 Hen, or other Bird not-Aquatick might have 

 done." 



Boyle was impressed by the resistance 

 of cold-blooded animals in his vacua. He 

 experimented with recently bom kittens: 

 "Being desirous to try, whether Animals, 

 that had lately been accustomed to live 

 without any, or without a full Respiration, 

 would not be more difficultly or slowly 

 killed by the want of Air . . . and found 

 that: These tryals may deserve to be pros- 

 ecuted with further ones, to be made not 

 only with such Kittens, but with other very 

 young Animals of different kinds; for by 

 what has been related it appears, that those 

 Animals continued three times longer in the 

 Exhausted Receiver, than other Animals of 

 that bigness would probably have done." 



These quotations show that the approach 

 to Boyle's experimentation was distinctly 

 ecological in the present usage of a word 

 unknowTi to him and that his experiments 

 were well conducted and not overinter- 

 preted. His main technical weakness lay in 

 failure to record for many of his experi- 

 ments any indication of the degree of re- 

 duction of air pressure in his self-styled 

 "Vacuo Bovliano." 



Reaumur (1683-1757) has a place near 

 the beginning of the 2;reat modern tradition 

 of natural history. His most notable work, 

 "Memoires pour servir a I'histoire des in- 

 sectes." filled six large volumes. He was 



concerned with the conditions of Ufe of 

 insects, as well as with their structure, and 

 he experimented with their habits of Ufe, 

 including leaf-mining, gall formation, and, 

 more especially, the community hfe of so- 

 cial insects. He studied parasitism among 

 the Hymenoptera. He made observations on 

 shell formation in mollusks, movement of 

 primitive animals, and the digestion of food. 

 Reaumur was a man of much influence in 

 his own day, and his work is still held in 

 high esteem, as witness the appearance in 

 1926 of one of his hitherto unpublished 

 manuscripts, translated and annotated by 

 William M. Wheeler. 



The modern aspect of ecology did not 

 begin to take form until early in the eight- 

 eenth century. Linnaeus (1707-1778) and 

 Buff on (1707-1788), each in his character- 

 istic style, made notable contributions. Nor- 

 denskiold (p. 215), with some truth and 

 pardonable patiiotism, proclaims that in ad- 

 dition to founding modern systematics, 

 Linnaeus originated all that is now called 

 "phenological, ecological, and geographic 

 zoology and botany" by his descriptions of 

 the influence of external conditions. 



Of Buff on, Lankester (1889) said that he 

 "alone among the greater writers of the 

 three past centuries emphasized that view 

 of living things which we call 'bionomics.' 

 Buffon deliberately opposed himself to the 

 mere exposition of the structural resem- 

 blances and differences of animals, and, 

 disregarding classification, devoted his 

 treatise on natural history to a consideration 

 of the habits of animals and their adapta- 

 tions to their surroundings. . . . Buffon 

 is the only writer who can be accorded his- 

 toric rank in this study." Buffon's great 

 principle of environmental induction is still 

 an important rallying point in dynamic bi- 

 ology. This should not be confused, as 

 apparently it is at times, with Lamarck's 

 principle of the inheritance of eflFects of use 

 and disuse. 



ENVIRONMENTAL PHYSIOLOGY: 

 RANGE AND ADJUSTMENT 



We now know that there are two types 

 of environmental effects that may be dis- 

 tinguished conveniently as examples of (a) 

 developmental, maintenance and/or tolera- 

 tion phvsiologv, and (b) response physiol- 

 ogy. The line between them is not necessar- 

 ily sharp, nor are they mutually exclusive. 



In addition to his work on the natural 



