ROLE OF ETHOLOGY 241 



and Wheeler (1902) were discussing whether Saint-Hilaire's 

 ethology or Haeckel's ecology should be used to designate the 

 science of relations of organisms to environment." i\llee et al. 

 (1949, p. 42) also quote this and regard it (as indeed it is) as a 

 correct summing up of the position in 1900. They point out that 

 Saint-Hilaire conceived of ethology "as including 'the study of 

 the relations of organisms within the family and society in the 

 aggregate and in the community' " and go on to say "it has been 

 argued that since the character of an organism is revealed onh' 

 through its reaction to its environment, there is no essential 

 difference between human and other aspects of 'ethology,' " thus 

 linking its etymology to its earlier English usage, revived by John 

 Stuart Mill (1843), as "the science of human character." 



It may surprise those who speak of "ethology as a new branch 

 of biology" to hear it suggested that ethology as an English word 

 with a zoological connotation first appeared in the original edition 

 of Parker and Haswell's well-known textbook of zoology (1898). 

 There they wrote: "The whole question of the relation of the 

 organism to its environment gives us a final and most important 

 branch of Natural History which has been called Ethology or 

 Bionomics" (\'ol. I, p. 9). This sentence remained unaltered up 

 to the fifth edition (1930) and is quoted as illustrative material in 

 the Supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary (1933, p. 343) 

 but both the word "ethology" and the sentence disappeared from 

 Parker and Haswell in 1940 when Lowenstein carried out a revision 

 of the text of Volume I for the sixth edition. "Bionomics" they 

 owed to Ray Lankester (1889) and "ethology" (in this context) to 

 Saint-Hilaire (1859). 



Wheeler (1902) rounded off the discussions by an essay in which 

 he discussed the three words — biology, ethology, and ecology — at 

 some length and concluded that "the only term hitherto suggested 

 which will adequately express the study of animals, with a view 

 to elucidating their true character as expressed in their physical 

 and psychical behaviour towards their living and inorganic en- 

 vironment is ethology^ He wrote (W^heeler, 1902, p. 975): 



The word "ethology" is singularly happy in its derivation from r]dos, 

 which embraces in the wealth of its connotations, all the aspects of the 

 zoological discipline for which a concise and appropriate name is so 



