Background Paper No. 2


tions; and thyy not infrequently established viable and of-

ten still extant mmall natural history museums. In the West

Indies, such institutions were established on St. Vincent

in 1763, Trinidad in 1820, Guyana in 1879, Grenada in 1886,

Dominica in 1891; other such institutions existed on Jamaica,

St. Lucia, and Antigua by 1907 (Aspinall, 1907). The Royal

Victoria Institute Museum and the still eminently viable Tri-

nidad Field Naturalists' Club were both founded in 1892. In

1922 the Imperial College of Tropical Agriculture, now the

Faculty of Agriculture of the University of the West Indies,

was established at St. Augustine, Trinidad. I.C.T.A. played

the most important role in the Caribbean in the training of

essentially applied ecologists in agriculture, entomology,

botany, silviculture, and soil science.

 The Dutch established similar facilities on Curacao,

and later a formal research station, as did the French on

Guadeloupe.


 This background of governmental interest in natural his-

tory helped form the basis of a heritage on those islands

today for the basic subject matter that now comprises eco-

logy. While it is true that the primary political and pro-

fessional motivation behind the establishment of most of these

facilities was improved agriculture, these organizations in

fact served as a regional locus for research in a wide var-

iety of biological topics. A significant part of the func-

tions of such establishments was the attraction to them of

visiting biologists, thus infusing the local naturalists


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