ANIMALS AND THEIR ENVIRONMENTS ADAMS. 529 



THE DYNAMIC RELATIONS OF THE ENVIRONMENT. 

 1. INTRODUCTORY. 



In the preceding section we have seen that to understand animals 

 we must consider them as active living agents which are constantly 

 changing and responding to their environment. That the environ- 

 ment of animals should also be studied as an actively changing me- 

 dium has not been as clearly recognized by students of plants and ani- 

 mals as one might anticipate from its importance. Some students 

 feel that the study and understanding of the environment is not a 

 part of zoology, or at least not an essential part. Furthermore, to 

 some of these students at least, the environment seems largely chaotic, 

 a confused unwieldly mass with no evident favorable point of attack. 

 This view is quite natural to those who have had no training and 

 practical experience in recognizing the " orderly sequence " or laws of 

 environmental changes, and particularly to those who do not feel 

 that environmental relations are an essential part of their subject. 

 By many such students the environment is viewed in a manner com- 

 parable to the prevailing chaotic views on weather before meteor- 

 ology became a science, or on taxonomy before Linnaeus, or on geol- 

 ogy before Lyell. If one has serious doubts on this point, he need 

 only turn to the standard treatises on zoology and search for a com- 

 prehensive and adequate recognition and utilization of the orderly 

 and regulatory character of the environment as an essential part of 

 the subject. 



The fallacy of this position has been well expressed as follows by 

 Brooks (1899) : 



I Bhall try to show that life is response to the order of nature. * * * 

 But if it be admitted, it follows that biology is the study of response, and that 

 the study of that order of nature to which response is made is as well within 

 its province as the study of the living organism which responds, for all the 

 knowledge we can get of both these aspects of nature is needed as a preparation 

 for the study of that relation between them which constitutes life. 



Later he says: 



But if we stop there, neglecting the relation of the living being to its environ- 

 ment, our study is not biology or the science of life. 



No one seems to have attempted to refute this ; naturally an easier 

 path is followed — to ignore it. Perhaps up to the time of the present 

 generation there has been some excuse for this confusion ; but now the 

 responsibility does not rest upon students of the physical and vege- 

 tational environment but upon students of animals, because the 

 former students have arranged their scientific data in a manner which 

 clearly shows the orderly lawful sequence of changes in environ- 

 mental activities. This should form the basis for a study of the 



