ECOLOGICAL BACKGROUND AND GROWTH BEFORE 1900 



41 



and Sars had found in the Baltic Sea (p. 

 37), This advance was based on a trip to 

 the Swiss lakes in 1868. Beginning analyses 

 of physical conditions in lakes preceded 

 Miiller's announcement. Simony was a 

 pioneer in such studies; as early as 1850 

 he had reported in some detail concerning 

 thermal stratification in lakes. 



Forel is regarded as the founder of lim- 

 nology, not because his work was chronolog- 

 ically first, but because of its long-contin- 

 ued significance. His paper of 1869 dealing 

 with the bottom fauna of Le Leman, though 

 not his initial publication, set the stage for 

 his Hfe work. His prolonged study of Swiss 

 lakes reached a peak with the appearance 

 of the three successive volumes of his mon- 

 ograph Le Leman (1892, 1895, 1904). 

 Forel's generalizations, in the form of the 

 first comprehensive discussion of limnol- 

 ogy, were published just after the close of 

 the period covered by the present chapter 

 and are specifically noted in the following 

 one (p. 47). 



The contributions of Forel include the 

 first demonstration of a deep-water com- 

 munity in lakes, the setting up of the first 

 complete limnological plan for the study 

 of a lake, and, what is more important, its 

 practical realization. Welch, in the index 

 to his 1935 textbook of limnology, cites 

 the work of only three men more frequent- 

 ly than that of Forel: Juday, Birge, and 

 Shelford, in that order. 



Lampert's summary (1910, p. 13) of 

 Forel's historical status in limnology gives 

 some interesting comparisons. In free 

 translation he says; Without reducing the 

 merit of the lesser investigators, who like 

 Forel recognized the significance of sys- 

 tematic fresh-water research and of whom 

 especially Weismann [August Weismann of 

 germ plasm fame], Du Plessis-Gouret, and 

 Fritsch must be mentioned, we may still 

 date the beginnings of limnology as a 

 science from Forel's 1869 paper. 



Weismann's contributions to limnology 

 began in 1877. Du Plessis-Gouret, who had 

 already published jointly with Forel, wrote 

 in 1885 of the profundal fauna of Swiss 

 lakes, and Anton Fritsch, among other con- 

 tributions, established in 1888 the first 

 fresh-water biological station. This was a 

 portable laboratory with at first some 12 

 square meters of floor space. The laboratory 

 was set up on the shores of three different 

 lakes in the Bohemian Forest before 1899." 



The dredging operations in Lake Su- 

 perior, made by S. I. Smith in 1871 and 

 reported at length in 1874, deserve men- 

 tion. He apphed to Lake Superior many 

 of the methods used by Verrill and Smith 

 in their work on the invertebrate life of 

 Vineyard Sound (p. 35) and reports, 

 among other data, a table showing the 

 bathymetrical distribution of the species 

 taken. This promising opening of limnolog- 

 ical studies on the Great Lakes has not 

 yet been adequately developed. 



Limnological work, once begun, flour- 

 ished greatly in Europe and on the smaller 

 lakes and rivers in the United States. Such 

 investigations were in full swing in the 

 last decade of the nineteenth century. 

 Early quantitative studies in this field 

 have already been discussed. Kofoid's in- 

 vestigations of plankton in the IlHnois River 

 (1903) were carried on from 1894 to 1899 

 and again deserve mention. 



A number of comprehensive bibliogra- 

 phies of limnological work have appeared, 

 two notable ones before 1900. Lampert's 

 first edition of his Das Leben der Binnen- 

 gewdsser (1899) contained a fairly com- 

 prehensive bibliography. In the same year 

 there appeared a workman-like review by 

 H. B. Ward of advances during the years 

 from 1893 to 1898. This review contains 

 a bibliography of thirty-eight closely 

 printed pages of citations to work pubhshed 

 during this brief interval. Its pages remind 

 us that the relict fauna of Tanganyika and 

 of Baikal were being studied, as were also 

 problems concerning the origin and dis- 

 persal of fresh-water animals. Cave life was 

 receiving attention, and Ward states (1899, 

 p. 332) that "Lorenzi, Packard, and Len- 

 denfeld have given summaries of our 

 knowledge regarding cave animals with 

 frequent references both morphological and 

 ecological \sic'\ to the freshwater fauna of 

 such localities." 



From this bibliography of Ward's we find 

 that the veterans were busy during the 

 half-decade under consideration. They are 

 represented by men like Sars and Forel. 

 Many of the stalwarts of twentieth century 

 limnology had also begun work. Birge was 



" Fritsch's "portable laboratory" was made in 

 eighty sections so that it could be dismantled 

 in an hour and a half^ moved to another lake 

 and set up again in two and a half hours. It 

 weighed about 1000 kg. (personal communica- 

 tion from Chancey Juday). 



