UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PUBLICATIONS 



ZOOLOGY 



Vol. 16, No. 20, pp. 381-392 March 3, 1917 



SPECIFICITY IN BEHAVIOR AND THE RELA- 

 TION BETWEEN HABITS IN NATURE AND 

 REACTIONS IN THE LABORATORY 



BT 



CALVIN O. ESTERLY 

 (Contribution from the Scripps Institution for Biological Research) 



Oue way of studying behavior consists in subjecting organisms 

 to physical or chemical agents and ascertaining the effect on the living 

 material. In this way it is possible to learn what organisms can do 

 under diverse experimental conditions ; that they are capable of 

 responses that would never be evoked in nature. This method em- 

 phasizes the agent rather than the organism ; the aim is to " work 

 out the physics and chemistry of biological phenomena" (Jennings, 

 1910, p. 353). The brilliant results of this way of working are well 

 known, and the results abundantly justify it. Its bearing on the 

 study of adaptation, if nothing else, renders it unnecessary to defend 

 the method. This synthetic mode of procedure, as it is called by 

 Jennings, i.s the one to use in studying organisms from the strictly 

 physiological point of view. 



There is, however, another point of view, in which the principal 

 interest is to discover, if possible, what organisms do in nature, and 

 why they do it. This gives rise to another method of studying be- 

 havior. "It is based upon interest in the organism rather than on 

 interest in physics and chemistry, and it makes the organism the unit 

 of work, the object of investigation" (Jennings, 1910, p. 353). The 

 actual mode of work is to learn what the particular organism does 

 in nature and to discover by means of the laboratory the reasons for 

 its behavior. In this way of working the laboratory studies, as such, 

 are at least of no more consequence than those made in the field. 

 Such a standpoint is fundamental and important, if it is granted 



