ECOLOGICAL 43 



In short, what shall we do with all this hard- won knowledge, 

 both particular and general; which we have reached through 

 escaping from the simple and crude old naturalistic story-telling 

 of animal ways and plant wonders ? 



And the answer to this question— is it not to apply all we have 

 learned, are learning, and can learn — and in each and all these 

 ways, analytic and synthetic, structural and functional, and thus 

 developmental and evolutionary — to Life's actual ways and concrete 

 wonders once more? In fact, to bring them back to Natural History, 

 now upon its modern spiral of never altogether arrested progress, 

 as Ecology; and so to carry it yet farther? All else, down to or up 

 from utmost minutiae of cell-structures, or subtlest biochemistry of 

 protoplasmic change and results, is but the unravelment of the 

 details of the Life-Drama which is increasingly opening before us, 

 from minutest and simplest life to man's, and all in intimate inter- 

 action throughout, albeit with fascinating by-play too. In presence 

 of this supreme woi Id-spectacle, of which we are the awakening 

 spectators, yet in which we are also taking our parts as actors in 

 our time and turn, our doctrines of Evolution, our theories and 

 philosophies of Life, are but reflective endeavours towards interpre- 

 tations of its plot. The advances of each and all the sub-sciences of 

 biology, be they small or great, thus return to their old source and 

 there find fresh scope and significance: for, after all, "The play's the 

 thing!" And if evidence be needed: Is it not plain throughout the 

 essential life and search of the great biologists, from Aristotle to 

 Darwin? And who, before Darwin or since, has been so character- 

 istic and so productive a worker in and for Ecology, fully realised 

 as Biodrama upon the vast world-stage of Inorganic Nature ? 



With all this insistence on the importance of Ecology, not only 

 at the simple beginnings of biological studies, but as utilising their 

 fullest development, much has still to be done towards a more 

 systematised presentment of animal and plant ecology, before 

 either can fully attract the more specialised and analytical workers 

 in other fields. It is hard to convince taxonomists, anatomists, 

 and histologists, embryologists and physiologists too; they are 

 failing to recognise that Ecology has really got far beyond its simple 

 anecdotic beginnings, often dubious at that. But ecologists, for the 

 plant world, and for animals too, are increasingly utilising all special 

 analyses of form and function and development for the individual 

 life-histories they seek to elucidate, the biographies of species, and 

 the association of groups, which they endeavour to write, and even 

 map out with increasing clearness. All such inquiries are again but 

 steps towards the main endeavour; nothing short of the panoramic 

 visualising of the general drama of life as actually now in progress 

 upon the world-stage; and behind this to realise its distinctive 

 scenes in past geologic time. 



