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Frank Fraser Darling

January 19, 2024

For the Canadian architect, see Frank Darling (architect).

Sir Frank Fraser Darling FRSE (23 June 1903 – 22 October 1979) was an English ecologist, ornithologist, farmer, conservationist and author, who is strongly associated with the highlands and islands of Scotland. He gives his name to the Fraser Darling effect.

Early life edit

Fraser Darling was born in Soresby Street in Chesterfield[1] in northern England, the illegitimate son of Harriet Cowley Ellse Darling and Cpt. Frank Moss.

His mother was the daughter of a prosperous family from Sheffield. Her family wanted the child to be fostered and forgotten about. However, she would not cooperate and refused to part with Frank. His father, whom he never met, left for East Africa around the time of his birth, and was killed in action on the Kenya-Tanganyika border in 1917.

In 1966, Darling revealed to his son that the pioneering plant geographer, Charles Edward Moss, was his uncle.[2]

Career edit

After running away from school at the age of 15, Darling was sent to work on a farm in the Pennines. He then studied at the Midland Agricultural College (now part of the University of Nottingham), at Sutton Bonington in the Borough of Rushcliffe in Nottinghamshire, and obtained diplomas in agriculture and dairying. Soon afterwards he married Marion Fraser ("Bobbie") and took the double-barrelled surname Fraser Darling, which, although he was divorced from Bobbie in 1948, he used until the end of his life.

While working as a Clean Milk Advisor in Buckinghamshire, and longing for a research post in Scotland, Fraser Darling heard about the work of the Institute of Animal Genetics at Edinburgh University, and in the early 1930s the Director, Francis Albert Eley Crew, offered him a place there to study for a PhD.[3] From 1929–1930 he was Director of the Commonwealth Bureau of Animal Breeding and Genetics, part of the Commonwealth Agricultural Bureaux, at Edinburgh.

In 1934, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers included Francis Albert Eley Crew, William Christopher Miller, and A. D. Buchanan Smith.[1]

Living at Dundonnell and later in the Summer Isles, Fraser Darling began the work that was to mark him as a naturalist-philosopher of original turn of mind and great intellectual drive. He described the social and breeding behaviour of the red deer, gulls, and the grey seal respectively, in the three academic works A Herd of Red Deer, Bird Flocks and the Breeding Cycle and A Naturalist on Rona. The Fraser Darling effect, proposed by Fraser Darling in 1938, is the simultaneous and shortened breeding season that occurs in large colonies of birds.[4]

The outbreak of the Second World War put an end to Fraser Darling's hopes of undertaking further research on the grey seal and, being too old for active military service, he chose to farm rather than leave the west coast of Scotland for wartime civilian work. Between 1939 and 1943 Fraser Darling reclaimed derelict land to agricultural production on Tanera Mòr in the Summer Isles. In 1942, the wartime Secretary of State for Scotland, Thomas Johnston, asked him to run an agricultural advisory programme in the crofting areas of the Scottish Highlands and Islands. He agreed, and for two years he travelled, taught and wrote articles that were later published in book form as Crofting Agriculture. In 1944 he was appointed as Director of the West Highland Survey based at Kilcamb Lodge on the Strontian Estate in Ardnamurchan[5]

The aim of the West Highland Survey, Fraser Darling wrote, was "to gather a solid body of facts... which would serve as a foundation for a future policy for the region". To gather these facts, he recruited five assistants, all young Highlanders: people personally acquainted with the crofting life who could converse with crofters in their native Gaelic rather than in the English of officialdom. Concerns at the Department of Agriculture about the radical nature of the findings of the survey and its implied criticism of the policies it had been pursuing led to repeated delays to its publication. It was finally published as West Highland Survey: An Essay in Human Ecology in 1955. In the concluding sentence of his introduction Fraser Darling wrote that: "the bald unpalatable fact is emphasized that the Highlands and Islands are largely a devastated terrain, and that any policy which ignores this fact cannot hope to achieve rehabilitation". The "devastation", he further concluded, was the inevitable outcome of bad land use. The Highlands had first been stripped of their natural forest cover, then they had been subjected to repeated burning, to intensive grazing, to overstocking and to other forms of maltreatment which had drained their soils of fertility and made them steadily less productive.[6] Frank Mears drew on the preliminary report of the West Highland Survey (1948)[7] in his interim report on planning and redevelopment in the County of Sutherland (1951).[8]

In 1949, Julian Huxley, UNESCO's first Director-General, invited Fraser Darling to be one of UNESCO's representatives at the United Nations conference on conservation at Lake Success on Long Island. Huxley had been interested in Fraser Darling's studies on animal behaviour since the early 1940s, and the two had corresponded while Fraser Darling was living on Tanera Mor.

His 1969 BBC Reith Lectures (entitled Wilderness and Plenty[9]) were an important contribution to the growing debate on man's responsibility for his natural environment. They were described at the time as "an eloquent statement of the dependence of all living things on one another".

Fraser Darling received an Honorary Doctorate from Heriot-Watt University in 1971.[10]

He died in Forres in Morayshire in north-east Scotland in October 1979.[1]

Family edit

Darling married three times: firstly in 1922 to Marion Fraser (dissolved); secondly in 1948 to Averil Morley (d.1957); thirdly in 1960 to Christina MacInnes Brotchie.

Honours and awards edit

Selected bibliography edit

  • 1932 – Colour Inheritance in Bull-terriers. (Chapter in book by T.W. Hogarth).
  • 1932 – The Physiological and Genetical Aspects of Sterility in Domesticated Animals.
  • 1932 – Biology of the Fleece of the Scottish Mountain Blackface.
  • 1937 – A Herd of Red Deer. A Study in Animal Behaviour. Oxford University Press.
  • 1938 – Bird Flocks and the Breeding Cycle: a contribution to the study of avian sociality. Cambridge University Press.
  • 1938 – Wild Country. A Highland Naturalist's Notes and Pictures. Cambridge University Press.
  • 1939 – The Seasons and the Farmer: a Book for Children. Cambridge University Press. (Illustrated by Charles Tunnicliffe).
  • 1939 – A Naturalist on Rona: essays of a biologist in isolation. Clarendon Press: Oxford.
  • 1940 – Island Years. G. Bell and Sons.
  • 1941 – The Seasons and the Fisherman. Cambridge University Press.
  • 1942 – The Story of Scotland. Collins: London.
  • 1943 – Wildlife of Britain. Collins: London.
  • 1943 – Island Farm. G. Bell and Sons.
  • 1943 – The Care of Farm Animals.
  • 1945 – Crofting Agriculture. Its Practice in the West Highlands and Islands. Oliver and Boyd: Edinburgh.
  • 1947 – Natural History in the Highlands and Islands.
  • 1949 – Sandy the Red Deer. OUP: London.
  • 1953 – Alaska: An Ecological Reconnaissance. Ronald Press Company: New York.
  • 1955 – West Highland Survey: An Essay in Human Ecology.
  • 1956 – Pelican in the Wilderness: a naturalist's odyssey in North America. Allen & Unwin: London.
  • 1960 – An Ecological Renaissance of the Mara Plains in Kenya Colony. Wildlife Society.
  • 1960 – Wild life in an African territory. (Study made for the Game and Tsetse Control Dept of Northern Rhodesia). Oxford University: London.
  • 1966 – Future Environments of North America: Transformation of a Continent. (With John P. Milton). Natural History Press: New York.
  • 1969 – The Highlands and Islands. (Revised edition of Natural History in the Highlands and Islands, with J. Morton Boyd). Collins: London. ISBN 0-00-631955-6
  • 1969 – Impacts of Man on the Biosphere.
  • 1970 – Wilderness And Plenty: the Reith Lectures 1969. BBC. ISBN 0-563-09281-5
  • 1971 – A Conversation on Population, Environment, and Human Well-Being. Conservation Foundation: Washington.
  • 1972 – Foreword to “What We Eat Today” by Michael and Sheilagh Crawford, Neville Spearman, London SBN 85435 360 7.

Further reading edit

  • Wightman, Andy (1992), From Fraser Darling to Terry Wogan: A Perspective on Scotland's Forests, in Mollison. Denis (ed.) (1992), Wilderness with People: The Management of Wild Land, John Muir Trust, pp. 56 – 61

Notes edit

  1. ^ a b c (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 24 January 2013. Retrieved 13 January 2016.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  2. ^ Letter from F. Fraser Darling to Alasdair Fraser-Darling, 26 March 1966. St Andrew's University Library Special Collections, ms38449.
  3. ^ Darling, Frank Fraser (1930). "Studies in the biology of the fleece of the Scottish mountain Blackface breed of sheep". {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  4. ^ Michael Allaby (1999). "Fraser Darling effect". Dictionary of Zoology. Retrieved 26 May 2012.
  5. ^ Hunter, James (1984), "Forgotten Blueprint for the Highlands", The Weekend Scotsman, 20 October 1984.
  6. ^ Fraser Darling, Frank (1955), West Highland Survey: An Essay in Human Ecology, Oxford University Press
  7. ^ Fraser Darling, Frank (1948), Preliminary Report of the West Highland Survey.
  8. ^ Mears, F.C. (1951), County of Sutherland: Interim Report on Planning and Development, Sutherland County Council, June 1951, p. 20
  9. ^ "The Reith Lectures: Frank Fraser Darling: Wilderness and Plenty: 1969". BBC Online. Retrieved 30 June 2011.
  10. ^ "Heriot-Watt University Edinburgh: Honorary Graduates". 1.hw.ac.uk. Retrieved 7 April 2016.

References edit

External links edit

 
Wikiquote has quotations related to Frank Fraser Darling.
  • Reith lecture recordings

January 19, 2024
frank, fraser, darling, canadian, architect, frank, darling, architect, frse, june, 1903, october, 1979, english, ecologist, ornithologist, farmer, conservationist, author, strongly, associated, with, highlands, islands, scotland, gives, name, fraser, darling,. For the Canadian architect see Frank Darling architect Sir Frank Fraser Darling FRSE 23 June 1903 22 October 1979 was an English ecologist ornithologist farmer conservationist and author who is strongly associated with the highlands and islands of Scotland He gives his name to the Fraser Darling effect Contents 1 Early life 2 Career 3 Family 4 Honours and awards 5 Selected bibliography 6 Further reading 7 Notes 8 References 9 External linksEarly life editFraser Darling was born in Soresby Street in Chesterfield 1 in northern England the illegitimate son of Harriet Cowley Ellse Darling and Cpt Frank Moss His mother was the daughter of a prosperous family from Sheffield Her family wanted the child to be fostered and forgotten about However she would not cooperate and refused to part with Frank His father whom he never met left for East Africa around the time of his birth and was killed in action on the Kenya Tanganyika border in 1917 In 1966 Darling revealed to his son that the pioneering plant geographer Charles Edward Moss was his uncle 2 Career editThis section needs additional citations for verification Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources in this section Unsourced material may be challenged and removed Find sources Frank Fraser Darling news newspapers books scholar JSTOR January 2023 Learn how and when to remove this template message After running away from school at the age of 15 Darling was sent to work on a farm in the Pennines He then studied at the Midland Agricultural College now part of the University of Nottingham at Sutton Bonington in the Borough of Rushcliffe in Nottinghamshire and obtained diplomas in agriculture and dairying Soon afterwards he married Marion Fraser Bobbie and took the double barrelled surname Fraser Darling which although he was divorced from Bobbie in 1948 he used until the end of his life While working as a Clean Milk Advisor in Buckinghamshire and longing for a research post in Scotland Fraser Darling heard about the work of the Institute of Animal Genetics at Edinburgh University and in the early 1930s the Director Francis Albert Eley Crew offered him a place there to study for a PhD 3 From 1929 1930 he was Director of the Commonwealth Bureau of Animal Breeding and Genetics part of the Commonwealth Agricultural Bureaux at Edinburgh In 1934 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh His proposers included Francis Albert Eley Crew William Christopher Miller and A D Buchanan Smith 1 Living at Dundonnell and later in the Summer Isles Fraser Darling began the work that was to mark him as a naturalist philosopher of original turn of mind and great intellectual drive He described the social and breeding behaviour of the red deer gulls and the grey seal respectively in the three academic works A Herd of Red Deer Bird Flocks and the Breeding Cycle and A Naturalist on Rona The Fraser Darling effect proposed by Fraser Darling in 1938 is the simultaneous and shortened breeding season that occurs in large colonies of birds 4 The outbreak of the Second World War put an end to Fraser Darling s hopes of undertaking further research on the grey seal and being too old for active military service he chose to farm rather than leave the west coast of Scotland for wartime civilian work Between 1939 and 1943 Fraser Darling reclaimed derelict land to agricultural production on Tanera Mor in the Summer Isles In 1942 the wartime Secretary of State for Scotland Thomas Johnston asked him to run an agricultural advisory programme in the crofting areas of the Scottish Highlands and Islands He agreed and for two years he travelled taught and wrote articles that were later published in book form as Crofting Agriculture In 1944 he was appointed as Director of the West Highland Survey based at Kilcamb Lodge on the Strontian Estate in Ardnamurchan 5 The aim of the West Highland Survey Fraser Darling wrote was to gather a solid body of facts which would serve as a foundation for a future policy for the region To gather these facts he recruited five assistants all young Highlanders people personally acquainted with the crofting life who could converse with crofters in their native Gaelic rather than in the English of officialdom Concerns at the Department of Agriculture about the radical nature of the findings of the survey and its implied criticism of the policies it had been pursuing led to repeated delays to its publication It was finally published as West Highland Survey An Essay in Human Ecology in 1955 In the concluding sentence of his introduction Fraser Darling wrote that the bald unpalatable fact is emphasized that the Highlands and Islands are largely a devastated terrain and that any policy which ignores this fact cannot hope to achieve rehabilitation The devastation he further concluded was the inevitable outcome of bad land use The Highlands had first been stripped of their natural forest cover then they had been subjected to repeated burning to intensive grazing to overstocking and to other forms of maltreatment which had drained their soils of fertility and made them steadily less productive 6 Frank Mears drew on the preliminary report of the West Highland Survey 1948 7 in his interim report on planning and redevelopment in the County of Sutherland 1951 8 In 1949 Julian Huxley UNESCO s first Director General invited Fraser Darling to be one of UNESCO s representatives at the United Nations conference on conservation at Lake Success on Long Island Huxley had been interested in Fraser Darling s studies on animal behaviour since the early 1940s and the two had corresponded while Fraser Darling was living on Tanera Mor His 1969 BBC Reith Lectures entitled Wilderness and Plenty 9 were an important contribution to the growing debate on man s responsibility for his natural environment They were described at the time as an eloquent statement of the dependence of all living things on one another Fraser Darling received an Honorary Doctorate from Heriot Watt University in 1971 10 He died in Forres in Morayshire in north east Scotland in October 1979 1 Family editDarling married three times firstly in 1922 to Marion Fraser dissolved secondly in 1948 to Averil Morley d 1957 thirdly in 1960 to Christina MacInnes Brotchie Honours and awards edit1933 1936 Awarded Barnard Medal 1934 Elected Fellow Royal Society of Edinburgh 1936 1939 Appointed Carnegie Research Fellow 1947 Awarded Mungo Park Medal Royal Scottish Geographical Society 1970 Awarded Knighthood 1970 1973 Appointed member of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution 1972 Awarded Centenary Medal US National Park Service 1973 Created Commandeur Order of the Golden Ark Netherlands Selected bibliography edit1932 Colour Inheritance in Bull terriers Chapter in book by T W Hogarth 1932 The Physiological and Genetical Aspects of Sterility in Domesticated Animals 1932 Biology of the Fleece of the Scottish Mountain Blackface 1937 A Herd of Red Deer A Study in Animal Behaviour Oxford University Press 1938 Bird Flocks and the Breeding Cycle a contribution to the study of avian sociality Cambridge University Press 1938 Wild Country A Highland Naturalist s Notes and Pictures Cambridge University Press 1939 The Seasons and the Farmer a Book for Children Cambridge University Press Illustrated by Charles Tunnicliffe 1939 A Naturalist on Rona essays of a biologist in isolation Clarendon Press Oxford 1940 Island Years G Bell and Sons 1941 The Seasons and the Fisherman Cambridge University Press 1942 The Story of Scotland Collins London 1943 Wildlife of Britain Collins London 1943 Island Farm G Bell and Sons 1943 The Care of Farm Animals 1945 Crofting Agriculture Its Practice in the West Highlands and Islands Oliver and Boyd Edinburgh 1947 Natural History in the Highlands and Islands 1949 Sandy the Red Deer OUP London 1953 Alaska An Ecological Reconnaissance Ronald Press Company New York 1955 West Highland Survey An Essay in Human Ecology 1956 Pelican in the Wilderness a naturalist s odyssey in North America Allen amp Unwin London 1960 An Ecological Renaissance of the Mara Plains in Kenya Colony Wildlife Society 1960 Wild life in an African territory Study made for the Game and Tsetse Control Dept of Northern Rhodesia Oxford University London 1966 Future Environments of North America Transformation of a Continent With John P Milton Natural History Press New York 1969 The Highlands and Islands Revised edition of Natural History in the Highlands and Islands with J Morton Boyd Collins London ISBN 0 00 631955 6 1969 Impacts of Man on the Biosphere 1970 Wilderness And Plenty the Reith Lectures 1969 BBC ISBN 0 563 09281 5 1971 A Conversation on Population Environment and Human Well Being Conservation Foundation Washington 1972 Foreword to What We Eat Today by Michael and Sheilagh Crawford Neville Spearman London SBN 85435 360 7 Further reading editWightman Andy 1992 From Fraser Darling to Terry Wogan A Perspective on Scotland s Forests in Mollison Denis ed 1992 Wilderness with People The Management of Wild Land John Muir Trust pp 56 61Notes edit a b c Archived copy PDF Archived from the original PDF on 24 January 2013 Retrieved 13 January 2016 a href Template Cite web html title Template Cite web cite web a CS1 maint archived copy as title link Letter from F Fraser Darling to Alasdair Fraser Darling 26 March 1966 St Andrew s University Library Special Collections ms38449 Darling Frank Fraser 1930 Studies in the biology of the fleece of the Scottish mountain Blackface breed of sheep a href Template Cite journal html title Template Cite journal cite journal a Cite journal requires journal help Michael Allaby 1999 Fraser Darling effect Dictionary of Zoology Retrieved 26 May 2012 Hunter James 1984 Forgotten Blueprint for the Highlands The Weekend Scotsman 20 October 1984 Fraser Darling Frank 1955 West Highland Survey An Essay in Human Ecology Oxford University Press Fraser Darling Frank 1948 Preliminary Report of the West Highland Survey Mears F C 1951 County of Sutherland Interim Report on Planning and Development Sutherland County Council June 1951 p 20 The Reith Lectures Frank Fraser Darling Wilderness and Plenty 1969 BBC Online Retrieved 30 June 2011 Heriot Watt University Edinburgh Honorary Graduates 1 hw ac uk Retrieved 7 April 2016 References editBoyd John Morton 1986 Fraser Darling s Islands Edinburgh University Press ISBN 0 85224 514 9 Boyd John Morton editor 1992 Fraser Darling in Africa A Rhino in the Whistling Thorn Edinburgh University Press ISBN 0 7486 0368 9External links edit nbsp Wikiquote has quotations related to Frank Fraser Darling Reith lecture recordings Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Frank Fraser Darling amp oldid 1171151346, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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