Silent Spring by Rachel Carson

6. Earth’s Green Mantle WATER, SOIL, and the earth’s green mantle of plants make up the world that s upports the animal life of ...

for each othe r. The original range of the bird coincided with the range of the s age, and as the s ag elands have been reduced, ...

always ass ociated with the s hotgun approach to nature: the spraying also eliminates a great many plants that we re not its int ...

Take, for ins tance, that commodity prized by every c hambe r of comme rce throughout the land—the good will of vacationing tour ...

on these trees had died, others were without leaves , and the deforme d, weeping effect of whole trees persisted. I know well a ...

die out, with far-reaching cons equences to the ecology of the whole region. Many herbs , s hrubs , and trees of fores ts and ra ...

and having complete control over their material. Sometimes compressor pumps and material can be mounted on truck chas s is , but ...

effect was s us pected in s orghum, s unflower, s piderwort, lambs quarte rs , pigweed, and smartweed. Some of these are normall ...

indicator of the condition of the s oil. This us eful function is of cours e lost where chemical weed killers have been used. Th ...

particular s pecies but at managing vegetation as a living community. Othe r s olid achievements show what can be done. Biologic ...

grazing. The whole operation had cos t less than a penny per acre. In contras t, the unsatisfactory attempts at chemical control ...

7. Needless Havoc AS MAN PROCEEDS toward his announced goal of the conques t of nature, he has writte n a depres s ing record of ...

record of des truction and death of A merican wildlife has accumulated. Let us look at s ome of thes e progra ms and s ee what h ...

none.’) A n official of the Federal Aviation Agency was later quoted in the local press to the effect that ‘this is a s afe oper ...

upon to treat four of his patients within an hour after they had bee n expos ed while watching the planes at work. All had simil ...

effect on the bird populations could eas ily have been foretold. Bro wn th ras hers , s tarlings , meadowlarks, grackles, and ph ...

thras hers. Thes e and many other bi rds were s harply reduce d els ewhere. Pheas ant hunte rs felt the effects of the beetle ca ...

s oil. When inges ted by a foraging beetle grub they multiply prodigious ly in its blood, caus ing it to turn an abnormally whit ...

After years of work, s ome s uccess has now been reported. When this ‘breakthrough’ is thoroughly es tablis hed perhaps s ome s ...

8. And No Birds Sing OVER INCREASINGLY large areas of the United States , s pring now comes unheralded by the return of the bird ...