Silent Spring (40 page)

It is not surprising that the island of Newfoundland, which has no native shrews but is beset with saw flies, so eagerly desired some of these small, efficient mammals that in 1958 the introduction of the masked shrew—the most efficient sawfly predator—was attempted. Canadian officials report in 1962 that the attempt has been successful. The shrews are multiplying and are spreading out over the island, some marked individuals having been recovered as much as ten miles from the point of release.

There is, then, a whole battery of armaments available to the forester who is willing to look for permanent solutions that preserve and strengthen the natural relations in the forest. Chemical pest control in the forest is at best a stopgap measure bringing no real solution, at worst killing the fishes in the forest streams, bringing on plagues of insects, and destroying the natural controls and those we may be trying to introduce. By such violent measures, says Dr. Ruppertshofen, "the partnership for life of the forest is entirely being unbalanced, and the catastrophes caused by parasites repeat in shorter and shorter periods ... We, therefore, have to put an end to these unnatural manipulations brought into the most important and almost last natural living space which has been left for us."

Through all these new, imaginative, and creative approaches to the problem of sharing our earth with other creatures there runs a constant theme, the awareness that we are dealing with life—with living populations and all their pressures and counterpressures, their surges and recessions. Only by taking account of such life forces and by cautiously seeking to guide them into channels favorable to ourselves can we hope to achieve a reasonable accommodation between the insect hordes and ourselves.

The current vogue for poisons has failed utterly to take into account these most fundamental considerations. As crude a weapon as the cave man's club, the chemical barrage has been hurled against the fabric of life—a fabric on the one hand delicate and destructible, on the other miraculously tough and resilient, and capable of striking back in unexpected ways. These extraordinary capacities of life have been ignored by the practitioners of chemical control who have brought to their task no "high-minded orientation," no humility before the vast forces with which they tamper.

The "control of nature" is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology and philosophy, when it was supposed that nature exists for the convenience of man. The concepts and practices of applied entomology for the most part date from that Stone Age of science. It is our alarming misfortune that so primitive a science has armed itself with the most modern and terrible weapons, and that in turning them against the insects it has also turned them against the earth.

LIST OF PRINCIPAL SOURCES

AFTERWORD

INDEX

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Page
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"Report on Environmental Health Problems,"
Hearings,
86th Congress, Subcom. of Com. on Appropriations, March 1960, p. 170.

Page
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The Pesticide Situation for 1957–58,
U.S. Dept of Agric., Commodity Stabilization Service, April 1958, p. 10.

Page
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Elton, Charles S.,
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New York: Wiley, 1958.

Page
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Shepard, Paul, "The Place of Nature in Man's World,"
Atlantic Naturalist,
Vol. 13 (April–June 1958), pp. 85–89.

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Page
[>]
The Pesticide Situation for 1958–59,
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Page
[>]
The Pesticide Situation for 1960–61,
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Page 17
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Page
[>]
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Page
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Page
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Page
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Page
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Page
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Page
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Page 22
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Page
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Page
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Pages 22–23
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Page
[>]
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Page
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Page
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Pages 23–24
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Page
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Page
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Page
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Page
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, p. 310.

Page
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Page
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Pages 25–26
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Page
[>]
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Page
[>]
Kitselman, C. H., et al., "Toxicological Studies of Aldrin (Compound 118) on Large Animals,"
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Page 26
Dahlen, James H., and A. O. Haugen, "Effect of Insecticides on Quail and Doves,"
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Page
[>]
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Page
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Page
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Treon, J. F., and A. R. Borgmann, "The Effects of the Complete Withdrawal of Food from Rats Previously Fed Diets Containing Aldrin or Dieldrin." Kettering Lab., Univ. of Cincinnati; mimeo. Quoted from Robert L. Rudd and Richard E. Genelly,
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Page
[>]
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Pages 28–29
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Page 29
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Page
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Rosenberg, Philip, and J. M. Coon, "Potentiation between Cholinesterase Inhibitors,"
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Dubois, Kenneth, P., "Potentiation of the Toxicity of Insecticidal Organic Phosphates,"
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Page 32
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