Imperial Ecology: Environmental order in the British Empire, 1895-1945, by
Peder Anker, Harvard University Press, £41.50, ISBN 0674005953
AS CHILDREN of the new physics, we like to explain unexpected events from
superstorms to stock market plunges by invoking chaotic behaviour within
apparently stable systems. New Scientist was at it in November with a
cover feature on a theory that linked earthquakes, premature births, market
crashes and mass extinctions. But 70 years ago when the stock market crashed,
they called in ecologists to explain.
Oxford’s Charles Elton—on his uppers because nobody could afford to buy
furs from his chief sponsor,…
