The Cycle of Life:
An History of Experimental Ecology

Graves Forestry & Environmental Studies Library
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The cycle of life concept played an especially fundamental role in sciences related to forestry and environentalism. Knowledge of "humus" changed from "a black substance perhaps necessary to plant growth" in the 18th century, to being the medium in which microbes broke down the accumulated dead vegetable material making it available for the next generation of living organisms. The founders of organic farming applied this natural process in their reform of agricultural practices in the mid 20th century.

In several posters find the follwing items:
Justus Liebig, Agricultural textbook, 1845
Jean Baptiste Bouusingault, Economie rurale, 1849
John Pitkin Norton, Agricultural report, 1842
William Henry Brewer, Up the California Coast, 1868
Selman Waksman, Humus, 1939
 
Lloyd Ackert
Whitney Humanities Center
Yale University
53 Wall Street
P.O. Box 208298
New Haven, CT 06520-8298
Office: (203).432.3112

lloydackert@sbcglobal.net
The library is located on the fourth floor of the Forestry School on: