ECOLOGICAL BACKGROUND AND GROWTH BEFORE 1900 



37 



components, oceanography and limnology. 

 These subjects are concerned with all mat- 

 ters that apply closely to oceans, bays, gulfs, 

 and seas on the one hand, and to inland 

 waters, especially lakes, ponds, and streams 

 of fresh water on the other. Forel (1892) 

 called oceanography and limnology sister 

 subjects, and such they remain, with a 

 close family resemblance, but without hav- 

 ing fused into a unified science. 



In so far as oceanography and hmnology 

 deal with organisms in relation to their 

 aquatic environment, or with bodies of 

 water as an environment of living things, 

 they are a part of ecology. In so far as 

 these subjects are concerned with physical 

 or chemical features such as depth, waves, 

 currents or types of bottom, or with the 

 chemical composition of the water, as items 

 of interest in themselves, they have a rela- 

 tion to ecology similar to that of soil science 

 or physiography on land or of meteorology 

 for the world in general. 



The history of the earhest knowledge 

 concerning animal life in water coincides 

 with much of the early development of 

 biology in general, and its relation to the 

 early history of ecology has already been 

 traced (p. 14 ff). Attention was focussed on 

 the larger aquatic animals, especially on 

 the fishes of relatively shallow waters. The 

 gradual accumulation of information re- 

 garding these animals in relation to their 

 surroundings came mainly from the expand- 

 ing lore of the fisherman. Larger aspects of 

 oceanography, and to some extent of lim- 

 nology, too, were developed from the needs 

 of navigation. 



Study of the smaller organisms in water 

 dates from Leeuwenhoek's improvement of 

 the microscope (1632-1723). He himself 

 discovered rotifers and Protista. During the 

 century and more immediately after Leeu- 

 wenhoek a motley assortment of men with 

 diverse backgrounds devoted themselves to 

 the study of the taxonomy and natural his- 

 tory of small aquatic organisms. Many of 

 these students of aquatic microscopy seem 

 to have been curious about the Infusoria, 

 much as we are today about aquatic 

 bacteria. 



This exploratory period reached a note- 

 worthy stage in the work of Ehrenberg, 

 who, among his other contributions, began 

 a transition to aspects of microbiology more 

 closely related to modem interests. Murray 

 (1895, p. 77) says of him: 



"In 1836 Ehrenberg produced his first 

 works." His name will remain inseparably 

 connected with the discoveries relating to the 

 microscopic organisms of the sea. . . . One 

 salient point may be dwelt on, viz., the con- 

 nection he established between certain classes 

 of living microscopic organisms and the part 

 they played in geological times. . . . His ob- 

 servations exercised a great influence on the 

 study of micro-organisms, whose role in nature 

 is in an inverse ratio to their size." 



Johannes Miiller started the next ad- 

 vance when, about 1845, he began to use 

 a tow net to obtain samples of small marine 

 organisms from the North Sea. It remained 

 for Lilljeborg and Sars to recognize for the 

 first time the existence of a pelagic fauna. 

 Needham and Lloyd (1916) make the fol- 

 lowing comment concerning this discovery: 



"Lilljeborg and Sars . . . found a whole 

 fauna and flora, mostly microscopic— a well 

 adjusted society of organisms, vidth its produc- 

 ing class of synthetic [sic] plant forms and its 

 consuming class of animals; and among the 

 animals, all the usual social groups, herbivors 

 and camivors, parasites and scavengers. Later, 

 this assemblage of minute free-swimming or- 

 ganisms was named plancton. After its discov- 

 ery the seas could no longer be regarded as 

 'barren wastes of water;' for they had been 

 found teeming with life." 



Lohmann (1912, p. 22) states that dur- 

 ing the 1840's Ehrenberg, the Enghsh bot- 

 anist Hooker, and the Danish naturalist 

 Orstedt, taken together, recognized the 

 role of diatoms and desmids in the nutrition 

 of marine animals. They also found that 

 these plants and the radiolarian protozoans 

 are important in the formation of deposits 

 on the ocean floor (cf. Coker, 1947) 



Lamport (1910) cites numerous papers 

 by each of these pioneers, the earliest of 

 which was published by Lilljeborg in 1853. 

 Hensen (1887) proposed the modem term 

 "plankton" for this assemblage of floating 

 organisms; his development of quantitative 

 plankton studies has already been discussed 

 (p. 36). 



OCEANOGRAPHYt 



According to Edward Forbes (1844), the 

 naturalist's dredge is a modification of the 



* Ehrenberg had actually published in 1830 

 and 1832. 



f More detailed discussion of the history of 

 oceanography is given by Murray (1895), 

 Murray and Hjort (1912), Herdman (1923), 

 and Coker (1947). 



