Thus ethology has priority over ecology, but to my mind this fact carries no special weight, particularly since the word has become current in botany. To use a different name for the same subject or process in botany and zoölogy is as undesirable as to use a different term for heredity in plants and in animals.
Lankester, E. R.
1889. Article “Zoölogy.” Ency. Britannica, 9th ed. Amer. Reprint. Vol. XXIV, pp. 842, 856.
Lankester defines “Bionomics.—The lore of the farmer, gardener, sportsman, fancier, and field naturalist, including thremmatology, or the science of breeding, and the allied teleology, or science of organic adaptations: exemplified by the patriarch Jacob, the poet Vergil, Sprengel, Kirby and Spence, Wallace, and Darwin.... Buffon (1707-1788) alone among the greater writers of the three past centuries emphasized that view of living things which we call ‘bionomics.’ Buffon deliberately opposed himself to the mere exposition of the structural resemblances and differences of animals, and, disregarding classification, devoted his treatise on natural history to a consideration of the habits of animals and their adaptations to their surroundings, whilst a special volume was devoted by him to the subject of reproduction.... Buffon is the only prominent writer who can be accorded historic rank in this study.”
As I have access to but few of Buffon’s writings, I quote the above. Bionomics is seen not to be synonymous with ecology, as defined by most students, although it includes much that is ecological. The chaotic and unorganized “lore of the farmer” has no unifying or guiding principles, and although it contains many facts, from which a science may be built, to call it science seems undesirable.
It is of course advantageous in some ways to have agreement as to the limitations of ecology, or any science, but even the more exact sciences seem to fare little better, as is shown by the following statement: “It is not long since I heard a university professor begin a lecture on physics somewhat in this way: ‘Physics is the science of matter and energy. This field is so large that it is customary at present to break off the physics of the molecule and its reactions and call it chemistry. Also to put to one side the physics of the heavenly bodies and call this a part of astronomy,’ etc.” (Strong, Science, N. S., Vol. XXXIV, p. 409, 1911.)
Forbes, S. A.
1895. On Contagious Disease in the Chinch-Bug (Blissus leucopterus Say). 19th Rep. State Ent. Ill. (8th Rep. of S. A. Forbes), pp. 16-176.
In this paper Forbes defines (pp. 16-18) ecology and points out, I believe for the first time, that economic entomology is simply applied ecology. He says, “The study of œcology is thus to the economic entomologist what the study of physiology is to the physician.”
1909. Aspects of Progress in Economic Entomology. Journ. Econ. Ent., Vol. II, pp. 25-35.