Manual of The Southeastern Flora

This book, first published in 1938 and here reprinted with a foreword by Dr. Michael Gochfeld of Rutgers University is a classic.

To the world at large in the mid-twentieth century, Frank Fraser Darling (1903-1979) was well known for his novel and aggressive conservation efforts, which cast him as one of the leading lights of new conservation initiatives and of new approaches to land-use planning and agricultural development in Britain, North America and Africa. Today he is recognized as one of the top one hundred conservationists of the 20th century. The present volume, Bird Flocks and the Breeding Cycle, is known to a smaller coterie of ornithologists and behavioral ecologists. This book elaborated something quite novel, a comprehensive behavioral ecology principle linking environment, sociality, physiology, behavior, reproductive synchrony, predation and breeding success. What became known as the "Darling Effect", was elaborated on by researchers who over the next 60 years have both supported and rejected it, in each case refining the principle and establishing its boundaries.

It is apparent, both from the book itself and from Darling's other writings, that he intended to focus on the linkage between ecology and behavior, two fields which had previously had rather separate literature and approaches. In that respect, Darling was one of the first interdisciplinarians. Moreover, the uniqueness and importance of his contributions was recognized by those who reviewed his early work on the social ecology of the Red Deer (closely related to the American Elk or Wapiti) and seabirds.

Darling's Bird Flocks remains current today. The Darling Effect reappears as an organizing principle for research. Citation Index which charts how often each scientific work is cited by subsequent authors, reveals that Bird Flocks has enjoyed a steady stream of citation through the 20th century, an indication of its scientific durability

The value of reading Darling's Bird Flocks, lies not only in his insights into the literature on behavior and behavioral physiology and ornithology in general or on his rather substantial ethological descriptions of behavior and displays, but to interweaving of field observations and data with theory.

Bird Flocks was widely read and widely reviewed. It's virtues were both extolled and sternly criticized. One reviewer expressed a mixture of skepticism and commendation: "Dr. Darling puts forward a theory which he claims to be a new concept to be tried in the fire of future research and thought.... In fact, the wider one's experience the less ready one is to make any generalisation whatever in connection with birds.... Whatever modifications may have to be made to Dr. Darling's theory there can be no question that the presence of other mating birds gives a strong emotional stimulus....There is no doubt that this book will give an impetus to the study of the importance of the colonial habit amongst birds." (McWilliam 1938).

More uniformly favorable was the review by Nicholas Collias (1938), himself one of the foremost students of avian social behavior. He recognized that Darling's approach was pioneering, and it stimulated Collias' own work on colonial breeding in finches (for example Collias and Collias 1969). William Allee, one of America's foremost ecologists likewise praised Darling's approach to the "methods of work, restraint in interpretation and breadth of outlook" in reviewing Darling's earlier book on A Herd of Red Deer (Allee 1937).