INTRODUCTION 3 



on an animal unless you knew its name. Scientific ecology 

 was first started some thirty years ago by botanists, who 

 finished their classification sooner than the zoologists, because 

 there are fewer species of plants than of animals, and because 

 plants do not rush away when you try to collect them. Animal 

 ecologists have followed the lead of plant ecologists and copied 

 most of their methods, without inventing many new ones of 

 their own. It is one of the objects of this book to show that 

 zoologists require quite special methods of their own in order 

 to cope properly with the problems which face them in animal 

 ecology. 



3. When we take a broad historical view, it becomes evident 

 that men have studied animals in their natural surroundings 

 for thousands of years — ever since the first men started to 

 catch animals for food and clothing ; that the subject was 

 developed into a science by the briUiant naturalists before and 

 at the time of Charles Darwin ; and that the discoveries of 

 Darwin, himself a magnificent field naturalist, had the remark- 

 able effect of sending the whole zoological world flocking 

 indoors, where they remained hard at work for fifty years or 

 more, and whence they are now beginning to put forth cautious 

 heads again into the open air. But the open air feels very cold, 

 and it has become such a normal proceeding for a zoologist to 

 take up either a morphological or physiological problem that 

 he finds it rather a disconcerting and disturbing experience to 

 go out of doors and study animals in their natural conditions. 

 This is not surprising when we consider that he has never had 

 any opportunity of becoming trained in such work. In spite 

 of this, the work badly needs doing ; the fascination of it lies 

 in the fact that there are such a number of interesting problems 

 to be found, so many to choose from, and requiring so much 

 energy and resource to solve. Adams says : " Here, then, is a 

 resource, at present largely unwt)rked by many biologists, 

 where a wealth of ideas and explanations lies strewn over the 

 surface and only need to be picked up in order to be utilised 

 by those acquainted with this method of interpretation," ^^ 

 while Tansley, speaking of plant ecology, says : " Every 

 genuine worker in science is an explorer, who is continually 



