42 



THE HISTORY OF ECOLOGY 



writing about Cladocera, about limnetic 

 Crustacea of Lake Mendota, and about 

 the relation of areas of inland lakes and 

 the temperature of the water. Juday, who 

 had not yet established his productive 

 scientific partnership with Birge, reported 

 in 1896 on the plankton of Turkey Lake 

 in Indiana. Reighard of Michigan; Wes- 

 enberg-Lund, student of Danish lakes; 

 Zschokke, who studied Alpine lakes of 

 Switzerland; and Apstein, prominent for his 

 work on the plankton of the Holstein lakes, 

 are all cited by Ward. Zacharias, founder 

 of the enduring biological station at Plon, 

 Germany, was especially prolific during 

 these years of the 1890's, while Whipple, 

 and Ward himself, contributed extensively. 

 The development of limnology, far from 

 being at the end of a period, was in full 

 and active growth in 1900. Limnology had 

 already made direct contact with ecology, 

 notably in Forbes' essay The Lake as a 

 Microcosm. Although the subjects had by 

 no means fused, the development of mod- 

 em, self-conscious ecology owes much to 

 the groundwork laid by the pioneers in lim- 

 nology and oceanography, that is, to the 

 sound development of knowledge concern- 

 ing hydrobiology before 1900. 



THE RISE OF SELF-CONSCIOUS ECOLOGY 



The foregoing pages give in some detail 

 samples of the substrata on which self- 

 conscious ecology developed. Certain of the 

 persons mentioned were directly important 

 in the early growth of the subject in the 

 strict sense; many were not. It is customary 

 to begin the schematized textbook sketches 

 of the history of ecology with the \vritings 

 of Buffon, who lived from 1707 to 1788 and 

 emphasized, among many other interests, 

 the interrelations of organisms. Saint Hilaire 

 (1859) clearly outlined the scope of such 

 relationships under the name of "ethology," 

 which he conceived of as including "the 

 study of the relations of the organism with- 

 in the family and society in the aggregate 

 and in the community." John Stuart Mill 

 (1848) in his Lo^ic antedated St. Hilaire 

 in using the word "ethology," by which he 

 meant the science of human character. It 

 has been argued that since the character 

 of an organism is revealed only through its 

 reaction to the environment, there is no 

 essential difference between human and 

 other aspects of "ethology." 



Haeckel (1869) coined the term "Oekol- 

 ogie," from which the modern "ecology" 

 has been derived. He defined the content 

 of his Oekologie as "comprising the relation 

 of the animal to its organic as well as its in- 

 organic environment, particularly its friend- 

 ly or hostile relations to those animals or 

 plants with which it comes in contact." 

 Semper (1881) distinguished between the 

 physiology of organs and that of organisms; 

 the latter is concerned, he says, with the 

 "reciprocal relations which adjust the bal- 

 ance between the existence of any species 

 and the natural, external conditions of its 

 existence, in the widest sense of the term." 



Lankester (1889) under the term bio- 

 nomics included a miscellany that contained 

 the lore of the hunter and herdsman, the 

 science of breeding, and the study of or- 

 ganic adaptation. A few other terms have 

 been suggested for these or related phases 

 of biology, but none is important, except 

 the tendency, which still continues, to des- 

 ignate much of ecology as "biology." We 

 read of the "biology" of a snail or of a "bio- 

 logical" survey, when the treatment is 

 mainly ecological. This usage is to be 

 deplored. 



Subdivisions of the subject matter of 

 ecology began at an early date. Schroter 

 and Kirchner (1896, 1902) recognized the 

 ecological relations of the individual as 

 "autecology" and those of communities of 

 organisms as "synecology." As stated 

 earlier, Forbes (1895) formulated a defini- 

 tion of ecology and pointed out that eco- 

 nomic entomology is simply applied 

 ecology. 



This, then, brings ecology and its fore- 

 runners approximately up to 1900. It is 

 clear that the field was ripe for further 

 development, a development that has pro- 

 ceeded with quickening pace. The situation 

 at that time is correctly summed up by 

 Pearse (1939) as follows: "At the begin- 

 ning of the twentieth century ecology was a 

 young, but an established, science, and 

 such eminent ecologists as Wasmann 

 (1901), Dahl (1901) and Wheeler (1902) 

 were discussing whether Saint-Hilaire's eth- 

 ology or Haeckel's ecology should be used 

 to designate the science of relations of or- 

 ganisms to environments." 



Ecology was even more firmly established 

 as a special field of botany, for Cowles 

 (1901) began his important report on 

 physiographic ecology with the statement 



