The ecological century : a personal appraisal

225 Pages·1983·20.22 MB·English

by  Worthington

"This book comes with love and overflowing
congratulations from Grandpa and Nana for "A" level
Results, - 3 A's with Merit in special paper on
Biology and first in whole of Britain in "Business
Studies".
We, and the Author will sign book later."
21.8.84.

The ecological century
•
The author at mid-century.
The ecological
century
A personal appraisal
E. Barton Worthington
Clarendon Press Oxford
1983
Oxford University Press, Walton Street, Oxford OX2 6DP
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OXFORD is a trademark for Oxford University Press
© E. Barton Worthington, 1983
Published in the United States by
Oxford University Press, New York
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Worthington, E. Barton
The ecological century.
1. Ecology
I. Title
574.5 QH541
ISBN 0-19-854556-8
Printed in Great Britain by
The Thetford Press Limited, Thetford, Norfolk
To Stella (Johnson) (1905-1978)
and
To Harriett (Stockton) (1925- )
Without whose encouragement this book
would not have been written.

Preface
The eighteenth century was marked by enlightenment and the nineteenth
by industry. The twentieth may go down in history as the ecological cen
tury, and hence the title of this book. What the twenty-first century may
be labelled-progress or chaos-will depend on how well mankind learns
to ensure a proper balance between himself and his environment.
The word 'oecology' appears to have been coined by Ernst Heinrich
Haeckel in his Natural history of creation (1868), but it did not come into
regular scientific usage until near the end of the nineteenth century when
the Jett.er 'O' ( Oikos = house or habitation) was soon dropped after a
while in Britain and America, but it is still retained by some continental
writers.
From the time of Humboldt's Kosmos (1845-62) and Darwin's Origin
of species (1859) a few botanists and zoologists who were concerned with
the environment as well as with plants and animals were laying the foun
dations of ecology as a scientific discipline. For some time plant distri
bution and the reasons for it tended to make the running. 0. Drud's Hand
buch der Planzengeographie appeared in 1890, A. W. Schimper's Plant
geography on a physiological basis in 1903, E. Warming's Oecology of
plants (English edition) in 1909, and F. E. Clements Plant succession in
1916. In America the subject became related to the conservation move
ment which was already under way with the Yellowstone National Park
opened in 1872. American ecologists such as Clowes and Schantz were
also linking conservation with agriculture, thereby creating another facet
of ecology.
By the 1920s ecology was coming into its own and providing a scientific
cloak for what had long been known as natural history. In plant science
there appeared in 1923 A. G. Tansley's Practical plant ecology, in 1926
E. J. Salisbury's Geographical distribution of plants in relation to climatic
factors (in the Geographical Journal), and in 1927 E. J. Russell's Soil con
ditions and plant growth.
By contrast the early development of animal ecology appears to have
been slow, but its germs had been growing steadily under other names.
Notable was fishery science in its studies of fish populations in relation to
their physical environment, their food supply, and predators. Economic
and medical entomology, marine and freshwater biology also had strong
ecological components. The publication in 1927 of Charles Elton's Ani
mal ecology became a landmark. Meanwhile human ecology had been
launched as a subject in 1922, though not under that title, by A.
Carr-Saunders' The population problem.