Biological Journal of the Linnean Society (1987), 32; 17-29

Scientific natural history: a key base to ecology

R. J. BERRY

Department o f ,zbolosy, Univer& College London

Gower Street, London WClE 6BT

Like all science, ecology depends upon an observational and experimental base. This is ‘scientific
natural history’: it is a tradition particularly strong in Britain, where it is nurtured and stimulated
in local and national natural history societies. Ecology in Britain sprang directly from natural
history, in contrast to its origins in other countries from physiology. I t is argued that a healthy
erology depends on a flourishing knowledge of field biology.

KEY WORDS:- Evolution - ecology - natural history.

CONTENTS

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I7
Origins.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Devcloprnents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Ecology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Nature, natural history, and ecology . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

INTRODUCTION

The British tradition of natural history is almost unique. A similar tradition is

found in a somewhat weaker form in other countries of northwest Europe, and
there are, of course, excellent naturalists in most countries of the world. But
nowhere else than Britain is it so widespread and deep-rooted. Moreover, it is
closely linked with sense of place, not a simple love of fauna and flora. Richard
Mabey regards it as a national trait. He begins his biography of Gilbert White:
The British have for a long time regarded their relationship with the
countryside as something quite distinctive, a badge of cultural identity.
Despite having become a largely urban people, we continue to admire the
rural village as the ideal form of community, and have an affection for the
native that is probably without parallel in the industrialized world. It is a
passion which has sometimes deteriorated into sentimentality, and which
doesn’t always have a very clear view of history, but it has left an indelible
mark on our way of life [Mabey, 19861.
This tradition, badge, affection or passion surfaces repeatedly in British
writing: Ronald Blythe, John Moore, Norman Nicholson, Robert Rendall-the
17
0024-4066/87/090017 + 13 $03.00/0 0 1987 The Linuean Society of London
18 R. J. BERRY

list is long. However, the pertinent question in the present context is whether
these potent folk influences (Williams, 1973; Russell, 1986) have any relevance
to scientific developments, and in particular whether they have contributed to
the emergence and continuance of modern biology.
As far as Britain is concerned, the answer to all these questions is an emphatic
‘yes’. Charles Darwin was able to formulate his ideas and convince his
colleagues because of his knowledge and respect for nature; Arthur Tansley and
especially Charles Elton regarded the subject of ecology which they did so much
to found, as “scientific natural history”; and biological pioneers like Julian
Huxley, David Lack and T . R . E. Southwood all grew up as keen natural
historians. This situation contrasts markedly with (say) Germany or the U.S.A.,
where ecology was a firmly professional discipline from the beginning, with roots
in comparative physiology rather than field biology (McIntosh, 1985).
One of the fullest accounts of the British natural history tradition is David
Allen’s The Naturalist in Britain (1976). Near the end of the book, he describes
three initiatives which characterized and influenced the present shape of field
biology. It is the purpose of this essay to relate these initiatives to the wider
biological scene, and to emphasize their interdependence. Allen wrote (p. 266)
about the restrictions and frustrations in Britain during the Second World War.
Notwithstanding
. . . the cooped-up enthusiasm spilled out into audacious plans for the shape
of natural history in the years of peace ahead. That brief, profusely fertile
spell of idealism in mid-war that produced for the wider world the
Beveridge Report and the 1944 Education Act was productive for
naturalists as well. An entirely novel type of institution, a major departure
in publishing, and the start of far greater involvement with government
were the three most notable outcomes. The first was the residential ‘field
centre’-an idea born of the wartime evacuation to the countryside of a
London schools’ inspector, F. H. C. Butler. The second was the New
Naturalist Series, an unprecedented attempt a t combining popularized
scholarship, enticing production and the propagation of a distinctive
outlook-while also, in the process, proving the existence of a worthwhile
market at this level to an exasperatingly unadventurous book trade. The
third was the succession of authoritative pronouncements, commencing
with the report of the Scott Committee on Land Utilization in Rural Areas
in 1942, advocating the setting-up under government auspices of a national
system of nature reserves.
The ‘entirely novel type of institution’ was the child of the Council for
Promotion of Field Studies (now the Field Studies Council (FSC)), inaugurated
at a meeting held in the British Museum (Natural History) on 10 December
1943. The rest of this volume is concerned with the achievements and activities
of this organization; it is the purpose of this essay to describe the background
which led inter alia to the formation of the FSC. My thesis is that the FSC is a
manifestation of the ‘British tradition’, as integral to British whole organism
biology as the other two initiatives described by Allen-which led respectively
to the vast post-war boom in natural history publishing and films, and to the
establishment of the Nature Conservancy (now the Nature Conservancy
Council) and the Countryside Commissions. I n order to establish this, I shall
 SCIENTIFIC NATURAL HISTORY 19

describe the origins of the natural history tradition, how it developed, and
finally its importance to professional science.

ORIGINS

Keith Thomas (1983) has argued that the British tradition is essentially
utilitarian-a concern for folk-medicine, husbandry, horticulture and herb-
lore, inseparable from life in an evolving agricultural community. Charles
Raven (1947, 1953) has traced a more direct succession from the accurate
representations of animals and plants carved by British craftsmen in the late
mediaeval cathedrals (pre-dating the Renaissance on continental Europe) which
prepared and supported the English Reformation (since men and women
became conditioned to see the world as it really was, rather than as the
contemporary bestiaries and herbals represented it), and forged from there the
development of a scientific movement which thus allowed the rise of an
indigenous industrial revolution.
Probably there is truth in both views. Certainly there is convergence between
the approaches because at the end of his analysis (which covered the period from
1500 to 1800), Thomas identified four alternatives which have occupied
naturalists ever since (Berry, 1987a): town or country; cultivation or wilderness;
conquest or conservation; meat or mercy. He wrote (pp 242-243):
At the start of the early modern period, man’s ascendancy over the natural
world was the unquestioned object of human endeavour. By 1800 it was
still the aim of most people and one, moreover, which at least seemed firmly
within reach. But by this time the object was no longer unquestioned.
Doubts and hesitations had arisen about man’s place in nature and his
relationship to other species. The detached study of natural history had
discredited many of the earlier man-centred perceptions. A closer sense of
affinity with the animal creation had weakened old assumptions about
human uniqueness. A new concern for the sufferings of animals had arisen;
and instead of continuing to destroy the forests and uproot all plants
lacking practical value, an increasing number of people had begun to plant
trees and to cultivate flowers for emotional satisfaction.
The trends of these times were punctuated by major contributors, particularly
William Turner (1508-68), John Ray (1627-1705), Gilbert White (1720-93),
and Robert Jameson (1774-1854). Probably the greatest of these was Ray
(Raven, 1942). He became interested in natural history during convalescence
from illness at a time when he was a teacher at the University of Cambridge. H e
started exploring the Cambridge countryside, and unable to find anyone to help
him with his observations, decided to catalogue the local flora for himself. His
first book was a flora of Cambridgeshire (Ray, 1660). I n it he wrote:
First I was fascinated and then absorbed by the rich spectacle of the
meadows in spring-time; then I was filled with wonder and delight by the
marvellous shape, colour and structure of the individual plants. While my
eyes feasted on these sights, my mind too was stimulated. I became inspired
with a passion for Botany, and I conceived a burning desire to become
proficient in that study, from which I promised myself much innocent
pleasure to soothe my solitude.
20 R J BERRY
A knowledge of natural history was important to doctors in past generations.
Two of the key figures in the procession of naturalists drawn up by Charles
Raven (1947), William Turner and John Caius, were leading physicians of their
time. A major factor in introducing biology into the university curriculum way
the Apothecaries’ Act of 1815 which required all medical students to know the
British flora, and led to the introduction of field classes in botany. But during
the nineteenth century, field natural history became a mass fashion (Barber,
1980); by the end of the century, there were about 500 local natural history and
scientific societies with a combined membership approaching 100 000 (Lowe,
1976). Allen (1976) has identified as influences that contributed to this
enthusiasm: evangelical region, middle-class earnestness, the absence of the
dampening leaven of professional science, increasing mobility, and easier
publication through the introduction of steam-driven printing-presses,
lithography, and the lightening of the paper tax.
However, much of the impetus had gone out of the local natural history
movement by 1900. O n the one hand, professional biology developed, mainly in
the universities, changing the allegiance of some of the more able practitioners;
and, more significantly, local knowledge became channelled into national
Surveys, with local societies grouped into regional unions or losing their
members to new national societies. T h e more successful federations of societies
were associated with national and metropolitan scientific organizations, especially
thc research committees of the British Association and, from 1884, the British
Association Conference of Delegates of Corresponding Societies (in part
modelled on the Yorkshire Naturalists’ Union).
Notwithstanding, the number of people involved in natural hictory activities
continued to rise. T h e membership of the Royal Society for the Protection of
Birds is over half a million and that of the Royal Society for Nature
Conservation (representing 48 county or regional naturalists’ trusts) is 180 000.
‘4 significant proportion of such people are probably not practising naturalists
(the Botanical Society, whose members are likely to be involved in fieldwork,
had 2500 members in 1986, and the Mammal Society lOOO), but nevertheless
these memberships represent a considerable number of individuals interested
enough in natural history to subscribe to a society.
Before leaving the origins of British natural history, it is worth noting that it
has always been a practical tradition with little of the mysticism which grew
around Goethe in Germany, Thoreau in the U.S.A., and Rousseau in France
(although the last was not a naturalist in the strict sense) (Wrorster, 1977).
British natural history is concerned with recording and management, not
philosophical idealism; the contemporary ‘Green Movement’ has its roots in
continental and North American cultural alienation, rather than the earthy
realism of the British habit.
DEVELOPMENTS

“In a few moments of pessimism, I have sometimes wished that my

daughter would grow up into a small and sheltered profession-grow up,
perhaps, to be a sturdy-booted Professor of Seaweeds a t the University of
Aberystwyth. It would be a useful, harmless, and, I suppose, secure life, in
which she would compete, if she had brains, within a close professional
circle; she would, I suppose, make friends of integrity among colleagues of
 SCIENTIFIC NATURAL HISTORY 21

different nations and different colours. She would attend conferences, say,
at Leningrad, Buenos Ayres, Reykjavik, and Durban; and her work,
presumably, would take her into strange places from the Great Barrier Reef
to the Galapagos, or the mosquito-buzzing coasts of Greenland. If she were
open to the attractions of form and colour, she could please herself with
contemplating sea-slugs or corallines. And if she could write clearly and
honestly, unlike, I would say, many contemporary men of science and some
contributors to Nature, who have long ago forgotten the injunctions laid
upon the first members of the Royal Society, if she could write, she would
find plenty of things curious and valuable and stimulating to write about.
But I should disown her with disappointment if she turned out to be
superior, and to despise the popular and accurate exposition of her
science.”
So wrote Geoffrey Grigson (1956) in the Preface to a symposium on Nature in
Britain. He is describing the cosiness of academic biology, and implying its
arrogance and isolationism. The separation of amateur from professional has
been one of the most unfortunate happenings in biology. Natural history has
come to be regarded as an inferior relative of ‘scientific’ biology, and field
studies are denigrated as ‘nature study’. This attitude is commoner in the
U.S.A. than in Britain (for example, the American, R. C. Lewontin (1972)
received a book by E. B. Ford of Oxford as deriving from “the fascination with
birds and gardens, butterflies and snails which was characteristic of the prewar
upper middle class from which so many British scientists came”), but it is far
from absent in Britain. I t was not always so. The British Ecological Society
(BES) grew directly out of the mapping of plant species by local societies. A
“Central Committee for the Study of British Vegetation” was established in
1904 to co-ordinate this effort, and the members of this Committee became the
members of the first BES Council in 1913.
The BES was a true evolution from the local societies for three reasons:
(a) It provided a focus for an enormous resource of knowledge and
manpower. The Central Committee had originally been proposed by William
Smith (1903) of Dundee. He then moved to Leeds, where he found 3000 local
naturalists associated with the Yorkshire Union. Tansley (1904) wrote of the
national situation:
Scattered up and down the country are scores of men, whose hobby is
botany and whose acquaintance with their local floras is absolutely
unequalled. Too often they carry with them to their graves knowledge
which would be of the greatest value in helping to build up a picture of the
vegetation of the country as a whole. Convince them of the interest of
ecological survey work, and you would secure their cooperation in working
out and mapping local floras from that point of view, which with the
requisite general knowledge of methods and a certain amount of help and
direction, they would do a hundred times better than a visiting botanist,
with no knowledge of the locality.
The original members of the BES were men and women who had begun as
local naturalists, but who became, through the Society, biologists of national,
and in some cases, international, repute.
22 R. J . BERRY

(b) The regional structure of natural history provided an important means for
propagating botanical surveys. Some societies published their own journals, and
these were used to publicize the recording approach. The editors of the two
most prominent local journals, the Naturalist and the Irish Naturalist, both with a
national readership, were founder members of the British Vegetation Committee
and subsequently, BES Presidents (T. M. Woodhead and R. L. Praeger).
In addition to its links with local journals and societies, the British Vegetation
Committee also had connections with the N e w Phytotogist, founded in 1902 and
edited by Tansley. Reports of the Committee’s work were published in the New
Phytologist, and the links between journal and Committee continued until the
BES established its own Journal of Ecology in 1913.
( c ) The local societies provided a sympathetic forum for the launching,
testing, and refining of new ideas. They also had a tradition of field work that
had almost disappeared in the Universities and Metropolitan Societies. Sir
Michael Foster (1899) exhorted the Yorkshire Union:
The field is your laboratory, Nature herself is your teacher, and you can
roam at will over all the pastures of biology, without the let and hindrance
of prescribed study and academic ordinance. You are the complement of
the University and of the Special Society, and it is your privilege, and in
the interests of science your duty, to nurse and cherish that which they,
willingly or unwillingly neglect. . .
The roots of the BES were firmly in the local societies, but the very success
and growth of the national society meant that initiative and leadership tended
to move from the local to the national scene. The seeds of this were recognized
i n the very notion of the Vegetation Committee, which was urged by Tansley
(1902) on the grounds that
Cooperation is necessary if any considerable results are to be obtained. I t is
much to be desired that the surveying part of the work should be taken up
by active members of local natural history societies. A scheme could easily
be organized by which they might work under some central direction, and
there can be no doubt that, once initiated, the fascinating nature of the
work would ensure its continuance and propagation.
But as one of the original members of the Committee, Praeger (1923),
commented:
from the beginning of our field work the question why kept intruding itself,
becoming more insistent and more clamorous as time went o n . . . So it
came about that the glorious days of primary survey, when we ranged free
over moor and mountain, to a great extent were superceded. Our
campaign took on a new phase, and weapons of greater accuracy were
required. Six-inch map, binoculars and pencil were replaced or at best
reinforced by instruments for measuring the amount and variation of light,
heat, moisture, and by the whole battery of the chemical laboratory. Into
these fascinating experiments and observations I regret I was unable to
enter.. .
The proper development of amateur expertise led to a professional elite, which
became detached from its origins. Part of this separation was inevitable, as
 SClENTIFIC NATURAL HISTORY 23

Praeger implied, but part was a simple unease of the second-generation

professionals when faced with the wide experience of the dedicated amateur.
Without doubt, the split was scientifically detrimental, because field biology
came to be regarded as merely a supply house for the laboratory, rather than as
the core of the subject, serviced by laboratory investigations.
At the same time as the first tentative moves towards botanical mapping were
taking place, other developments were occurring, which were to have even
greater impacts on British biology. I n 1845, a General Inclosure Act accepted
the principle that the enclosing of land leading to restrictions on access and land
use, was the concern of all the local inhabitants, and not merely of the local lord
and a restricted group of commoners; and that the health, comfort, convenience,
exercise and recreation of all local inhabitants should be taken into account
before any enclosure was sanctioned. In 1865, the Commons, Open Spaces and
Footpaths Preservation Society was formed to resist the continuing enclosure of
common land; i t was the forerunner of the host of pressure groups which now
exist to protect or conserve nature.
The Commons Society led to the establishment in 1893 of the National Trust,
essentially a Land Company to buy and accept gifts of land, buildings and
common rights for the benefit of the nation. By 1912, the National Trust owned
13 sites of special interest to naturalists, including Wicken Fen in
Cambridgeshire and Cothill in Berkshire. However, several naturalists became
worried at the random way in which potential nature reserves were acquired,
with apparently little regard for the national significance of their animals and
plants; and a new body, the Society for the Promotion of Nature Reserves
(SPNR) was set up by Charles Rothschild, initially simply to stimulate the
National Trust and others to create nature reserves (Rothschild, 1979).
Meanwhile, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (later the
RSPCA) had been founded in 1824, to campaign against cruelty to
domesticated animals. This was followed in 1885 by the Selborne Society for the
Protection of Birds, Plants and Pleasant Places (usually regarded as the first
nature protection body), and in 1889 by the Society for the Protection of
Birds (later the RSPB), a largely woman’s organization concerned to stop
thousands of egrets, herons and birds of paradise being slaughtered every year
solely for their plumes. These bodies promoted legislation and encouraged
public participation in nature protection during the first decades of the present
century, but progress was slow, despite successes such as statutory protection for
Grey Seals and a range of bird species.
The next initiative came from the recognition of wasted resources, both
material and human. I n 1931, E. M. Nicholson and G. Barry wrote an article in
the Weekend Review stressing the need for a national plan for Britain to replace
piecemeal development with long-term planning. This stimulated the formation
of a non-party research organization, Political and Economic Planning (PEP),
which undertook a series of studies of the more pressing economic and social
problems of the 1930s. One of the most urgent of these was the decline of heavy
industries based on the coalfields, and the concentration of new industries in
areas remote from the traditional sites, facilitated by the increasing availability
of electricity and motor transport. This led to a Royal Commission on the
Distribution of the Industrial Population (1937-40), which urged the setting up
of a central planning board. Following representations from SPNR and RSPB,
24 R J BERRY

the Government appointed a Committee under M r Justice Scott to assess the

impact of this on the well-being of rural communities and the preservation of
rural communities. T h e Scott Report (1942) led to yet another Committee, on
National Parks under Sir Arnold Hobhouse, and this spawned a Wild Life
Conservation Special Committee, chaired by Julian Huxley. T h e conclusions of
this last group (published as Conservation of Nature in England and Wales, Cmd
7122, 1947) were instrumental in persuading the government to set up, in 1949,
the Nature Conservancy, as a research council alongside the Science, Medical
and Agriculture Councils. (A parallel report for Scotland was published as Cmd
7814, 1949.)
‘lhe SPNR and RSPB spokesmen who had advocated the setting up of the
Scott Committee, and a British Ecological Society working party which published
its own memorandum in 1944 (British Ecological Society, 1944), all had
eminent biologists in common with the Huxley Committee, and the moves
toward establishing nature reserves included clear and explicit suggestions of
their usc for ecological, experimental and genetical research (Sheail, 1976). In
fact, the Nature Conservancy as established in 1949, had a continuing conflict
between its research and conservation functions, which was not resolved until
1973, when the functions were separated in an Institute of Terrestrial Ecology
within the Natural Environment Research Council and a separate Nature
Conservancy Council (NCC). The establishment of such a research institute had
been urged by the British Ecological Society (1944), by a committee of the
Royal Society on the organization of biological sciences after the war, and by
the Scientific Advisory Committee (later ABRC) of the Government itself
(Sheail, 1976). Unfortunately, the piecemeal regional way in which the Nature
Conservancy had developed its research work meant that the form which the
Institute of Terrestrial Ecology took in 1973 was far from ideal for dealing with
fundamental problems of science, and only today 15 years later, is a sensible
Institute emerging. However, there is still a long road for the Institute before it
establishes its rightful place alongside the Universities, Learned Societies, and
the amateur constituency.
T o return to 1949: the formation of the Nature Conservancy freed the SPNR
(which became the Royal Society for Nature Conservation in 1981) from being
a pressure group, permitting it to concentrate on coordinating and stimulating
local action, and it now serves 48 County or Regional Conservation Trusts,
many with their own full-time staff. T h e relationship between the older
naturalists’ bodies and the new conservation or protection ones is still maturing,
and with the demise of the Council for Nature (established as the national
representative body of the voluntary natural history movement in 1958; closed
down 1979) and the difficulties of the Council for Environmental Conservation
(formed in 1969 as the continuing body of the “Countryside in 1970”
conference), it would be premature to speculate about the lasting pattern.
Meanwhile the RSNC and specialized conservation societies like the RSPB go
from strength to strength, and gain in importance as the pressures upon land
and its life increase.
Public awareness of conservation problems is undoubtedly higher than it was
15 years ago when the Ecologist published a Blueprint for Survival. Credit for this
cannot be given to any single event or organization: crises like the London smog
of 1952, the Teesdale reservoir controversy of the mid-l960s, the TorrPy Canyon
 SCIENTIFIC NATURAL HISTORY 25

oil spill of 1967, oil price increases in the 1970s, and ‘acid rain’ in the 1980s have
all helped, as have television documentaries, charismatic writings (like Frank
Fraser Darling’s Reith Lectures, 1970; Marion Shoard’s T h g t of the Countryside,
1980; or the Ehrlichs’ Extinction, 1981), the debates stimulated by the standing
Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution (appointed 1970) and the
effects of legislation (particularly the Wildlife and Countryside Act, 1981 )
(Ashby, 1978; Ashby & Anderson, 1981; Berry, 1982). The British consciousness
of their natural environment is probably higher today than it has ever been, and
a major part of that consciousness must be credited to the activities and
concerns of biologists.

ECOLOGY

As we have seen, biology is now divided between amateurs and professionals

to their mutual detriment: the professional does not have easy access to the local
knowledge and acquaintance with many taxonomic groups which characterize
the amateur, while the amateur lacks guidance and aim in the recording which
is the sphere in which he (or she) excels. Such apartheid is not complete. Its
breakdown is perhaps best seen in the ornithological world, where the British
Trust for Ornithology (which developed from the Oxford Bird Census, itself an
offspring of the University Ornithological Society) collates details of bird
habitats, breeding, movements, mortality, etc., collected by a large army of
amateurs; a small band of professionals stimulates, uses and liaises the amateur
bird-watchers to the benefit of both. A similar symbiosis in the plant world led
to the publication of an Atlas of the British Flora (Perring & Walters, 1962), and
the establishment of a national Biological Records Centre at Monk’s Wood,
which collects data from a number of national recording schemes, and publishes
atlases of species distribution (q.v. J. Heath & P. T. Harding in Seaward,
1981). For most groups, the bulk of the data is collected by amateurs.
However, it is not my purpose to discuss the role of the amateur in biology,
nor to re-describe the origins of ecology in Britain (see above), but to emphasize
the vital complementarity of ecology and field studies. This is not as trivial or
tautologous as might appear, because ecology is afflicted by illegitimate
reductionism in the same way as many other sciences (Berry, 1987b): there are
those who believe that the subject can be properly reduced to mathematical
models or simple chemistry (or energy flow), and who regard awkward facts as
inconveniences to avoid rather than stimuli for further work. British ecology has
suffered less from such distortions than, say, North American ecology
(Kingsland, 1985); indeed its problems have been with the opposite fault-the
uncritical accumulation of field data in the Baconian hope that the hard labour
of collection is equivalent to good science. For example, Peters (1980) has
specifically deplored the input of natural history into ecology, on the grounds
that it makes ecology “unnecessarily complex and necessarily unscientific”.
What, then, is ecology? Literally it is the science (or study) of the place or
dwelling. T h e name was originally coined by Ernst Haeckel in 1866 because the
word ‘biology’ has become so limited as to exclude physiology and embryology;
he wanted to restore ‘biology’ as a general term. Burdon-Sanderson (1893)
equated ecology, physiology and morphology as the three main divisions of
biology.
26 R. J. BERRY

Notwithstanding, Haeckel regarded ecology as simply a branch of

physiology, while F. E. Clements and H. C. Cowles, two of the founders of
American plant ecology, described it as identical with physiology (Cittadino,
1980). In contrast, the early animal ecologists described ecology as the “new
Natural History” (Adams, 1917) or “scientific natural history” (Elton, 1927).
Perhaps more usefully, Lyon & Sloan (1981) contrast traditional descriptive
natural history with ‘transformed’ natural history, which was “the historical
root of modern evolutionary biology, biogeography and ecology” through its
emphases on “quality, process, historicity, and concreteness” in distinction to
“quantification, mechanism, rigorous deductive analysis, and mathematical
abstraction” which they identify as the characteristics of the seventeenth century
scientific revolution. I n other words, the sciences deriving from ‘transformed
natural history’ are conceptually distinct from those of the physical sciences.
‘The importance of Lyon & Sloan’s assertion is its insistence on nature as a
dynamic process, rather than as a static, non-temporal mechanism. It is
well illustrated by Charles Darwin’s approach to biology. T h e fixed ideas of his
upbringing were broken by the unplanned observations he made on the Beagle;
his habit and passion throughout life was a natural history which could be
opened up by experiment (Clark, 1984). Evolution by natural selection was not
constructed by a closet biologist or any form of theoretician, but by a naturalist
who, in the words of his Autobiography,
. . . had no great quickness of apprehension or wit which is so remarkable
in some clever men, for instance, Huxley. I am therefore a poor critic; a paper
or a book, when first read, generally excites my admiration, and it is only
after considerable reflection that I perceive the weak points. . . O n the
positive side of the balance, I think that I am superior to the common run of
men in noticing things which easily escape attention, and in observing them
carefully. My industry has been as great as it could have been in the
observation and collection of facts. What is far more important, my lovr of
natural science has been steady and devout.
Evolutionary biology is usually thought of as distinct from ecology. This is a
false separation, which has hindered both disciplines. Mayr ( 1982) has pointed
out that Darwin’s success came through a n ecological perception of the causes of
geographical variation and differentiation, rather than speculating about
phylogenetic change like his contemporaries. Both Harper (1961) and Orians
(1962) have argued, from very different starting points, that only natural
selection can provide a unifying theory for ecology.
Ecologists are concerned with pattern, that is spatial relationships within
communities; evolutionists more especially with processes, or temporal change
within communities. As a definition, this is a n over-generalization, but it
focuses on the emphases which separate population biologists: ecologists are
primarily concerned with numbers (or densities) in populations, whilst
evolutionists are more interested in the factors involved in maintaining genetic
variability. This has meant that ecologists have been particularly involved
with identifying criteria for stability or fluctuation when species interact, for
invadability, and for extinction rates when competition takes place. Although
lip-service is paid to the fact that phenotypes may change, in practice they are
assumed to be effectively constant in ecological time (Berry, 1985).
 SCIENTIFIC NATURAL HISTORY 27

Pattern in nature is apparent to even the most casual observer. The analysis
of the pattern has spawned a dictionary of descriptive concepts-mutualism,
parasitism, competition, symbiosis, commensalism, antagonism, ad nauseam. But
when we seek the processes that make up the pattern, there is no better starting-
point than that given by Darwin (in Darwin & Wallace, 1858):
Nature can be compared to a surface on which rest ten thousand sharp
wedges touching each other and driven inwards by incessant blows. Fully to
realize these views much reflection is requisite.
But let the external conditions of a country alter. . . can it be doubted
from the struggle each individual has to obtain subsistence that any minute
variation in structure, habits, or instincts, adapting that individual better to
the new conditions, would tell upon its vigour and health? I n the struggle it
would have a better chance of surviving; and those of its offspring which
inherited the variation, be it ever so slight, would also have a better chance.
Yearly more are bred than can survive; the smallest grain in the balance, in
the long run, must tell on which death shall fall, and which shall survive.

Darwin’s great achievement was to change the focus of biologists from the
‘much reflection’ of pattern to the processes that determine the pattern. The
same thought has been developed by Paine (1980):
Pattern is generated by process. The former embodies static description, the
latter more subtle and dynamical events. Food webs along with their
associated cross-links provide a realistic framework for understanding
complex, highly interactive, multispecies relationships. I believe the
next generation of models must be more sensitive to interaction strength, less
to trophic complexity. , .

NATURE, NATURAL HISTORY AND ECOLOGY

Nature ‘exists’, it is objective fact; natural history is the awareness and

description of nature and ecology is its analysis and rationalization. Ecology
depends on natural history; prediction of the effects of environmental change
(through land use, ‘acid rain’, a nuclear winter, or whatever) cannot be
separated from an extensive observational base to underpin ecological models.
Unfortunately ecology has developed through (or perhaps ‘in spite of’) the
hiccups of fashion-for trophic levels, energy flow, community ecology, niche
theory, physiological models, and so on; repeatedly its direction has been
diverted by enthusiasts for a new concept or technique, and then rescued again
by the importunities of natural historians mzsu stricto. The lesson from this must
surely be the fundamental importance of well-educated field observers-men
and women able to understand the nature and significance of their observations,
and to separate their preconceptions and prejudices about human impacts from
their ecological judgment. That is scientific natural history; that is the future for
ecology.
Scientific natural history is not dull and desiccated. It involves enthusiasm
and enchantment. Darwin concluded the Origin of Species (1859) in a way which
embodies it:
28 R J BERRY

It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many

plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects
flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to
reflcct that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other
i n so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us.
From the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object
which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of higher
animals, directly follows. There is a grandeur in this view of life, with its
sc\,eral powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few
forms or one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to
the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most
beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.

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