Macfadyen: Population Dynamics and Other Areas of Eology the Relation of Population Dynamics Some Other Areas of Ecology*

Near where I live in Northern Ireland there is a large circular "temple" built on the very edge of a cliff in classical style of the late eighteenth century by Frederick Augustus Hervey, Earl of Bristol and Bishop of Derry. Around the lower edge of the domed roof is a Latin inscription which can be roughly translated: "It is a pleasure to stand upon the shore and to see ships tossed upon the sea". To most visitors this seems a cynical and heartless sentiment not uncharacteristic of a particularly worldly prelate. In fact you will find in Bacon's essay on "Truth" that this is only part of a quotation, which continues. . . "a pleasure to stand in the window of a castle and to see a battle. . . below, but no pleasure is comparable to standing upon the vantage ground of Truth. . . and to see the errors and wanderings and mists and tempests in the vale below". I have a feeling that this might appear to some of you to sum up the academic ecologist's attitude to the problems encountered by the practical agriculturalists, wildlife managers and horticulturalists. I recognise that the history of ecology has been far too often dominated by academic disputes about theory and terminology which bear little relation to problems of population management, and that there are still many practices which work empirically but for which we have little theoretical foundation. I am in a particularly vulnerable situation just now because, for the last five years, I have mainly been involved with university administration and teaching and have had limited time for practical work. I need to take special note of Bacon's final addition to the above quotation "so always that this prospect be with pity and not with swelling or pride". My intermittent involvement with the ecological literature certainly means that you will be able to augment and correct the examples on which I shall rely. But possibly, too, from my more distant vantage point, I can suggest some of the broader problems which worry me about the present state of ecology