Vocabulary from "Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson

In a somewhat mistaken attempt to allay fears, he added that the planes had emergency valves that would allow them to dump their entire load instantaneously.

Cats, who so meticulously groom their coats and lick their paws, seemed to be most affected.

The eastern states, which had the good fortune to sustain their beetle invasion in the days before the synthetic insecticides had been invented, have not only survived the invasion but have brought the insect under control by means that represented no threat whatever to other forms of life.

Between 1920 and 1933, as a result of diligent searching throughout the native range of the beetle, some 34 species of predatory or parasitic insects had been imported from the Orient in an effort to establish natural control.

We are told that inoculation with milky spore disease is “too expensive” — although no one found it so in the 14 eastern states in the 1940’s.

The poison forms a tenacious film over the leaves and bark.

“At no time during the spring or summer [of 1958] did I see a fledgling robin anywhere on the main campus, and so far I have failed to find anyone else who has seen one there.”

The feeding habits of all these birds not only make them especially vulnerable to insect sprays but also make their loss a deplorable one for economic as well as less tangible reasons.

Other possibilities lie within the field of forest genetics, where experiments offer hope of developing a hybrid elm resistant to Dutch elm disease.

According to these authors, the delayed but lethal effect on the young birds follows from storage of dieldrin in the yolk of the egg, from which it is gradually assimilated during incubation and after hatching.

Laboratory application of these studies to eagles presents difficulties that are nearly insuperable, but field studies are now under way in Florida, New Jersey, and elsewhere in the hope of acquiring definite evidence as to what has caused the apparent sterility of much of the eagle population.

The budworm populations, instead of dwindling as expected, have proved refractory, and from 1955 to 1957 spraying was repeated in various parts of New Brunswick and Quebec, some places being sprayed as many as three times.

At the sampling trap in the estuary of the Miramichi the count of grilse was only a fourth as large in 1959 as the year before.

Although spraying has been tried as a weapon against the ubiquitous budworm, the areas affected have been relatively small and have not, as yet, included important spawning streams for salmon.

This is not surprising, because in time of physiological stress the organism, be it fish or man, draws on stored fat for energy.

Like other species of salmon, the Coho has a strong homing instinct, returning to its natal stream.

This means, then, that every third year the run of salmon into this river will be almost nonexistent, until such time as careful management, by artificial propagation or other means, has been able to rebuild this commercially important run.

They are linked so intimately and indispensably with the lives of many fishes, mollusks, and crustaceans that were they no longer habitable these seafoods would disappear from our tables.

On the Atlantic Coast the sea trout, croaker, spot, and drum spawn on sandy shoals off the inlets between the islands or “banks” that lie like a protective chain off much of the coast south of New York.

Although sedentary in adult life, they discharge their spawn into the sea, where the young are free-living for a period of several weeks.