Word: insects
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...That Vanishing Eden," and "A Naturalist in Cuba," the latter concluded in 1945, contain little of the dry matter of zoology, though omitting nothing that a good naturalist could gather. His recent "Naturalist in Cuba," selections from which were printed in the Atlantic Monthly, discussed not only the animal, insect, and plant life of the region, but its geology, history, sociology, its people and their food as well...
Does DDT upset the balance of nature? Yes, but that's nothing to be alarmed about, says one of Britain's foremost authorities on insect physiology. The authority, who has the nervous name of Dr. Vincent Brian Wigglesworth, writing in the December Atlantic Monthly, took the long, calm view: chemicals have upset nature's balance before and DDT is merely the latest and most violent. The laws of nature have never been abrogated and there is no reason to believe that DDT can do it. Points and examples...
...Jamaica imported mongooses (from Java). They cleaned up the rats in short order- and then began on the snakes, the lizards and the birds. With all these insect-eaters out of the way, the insects all but took over the island. Finally the Government had to step in and get rid of the mongooses...
...Hawaii, where mongooses were introduced in 1883, the mammal-bird-insect balance was already out of kilter. Five species of rats were ruining sugar plantations. The mongooses got some of the rats, but the rest learned to live in the trees, where mongooses cannot climb. The rats got the tree-nesting birds, while the frustrated mongooses made life dangerous for ground birds...
Burl Icle Ivanhoe Ives, 36, a jolly, round (270 Ibs.) "git-tar"-strumming balladeer, sang it on the radio, in nightclubs, on records and on Broadway (Sing Out, Sweet Land!). He made it a hit, and it helped make him one. He called it an "insect song," just one of 350 ballads he had picked up while bumming around the U.S. singing (TIME, July 27, 1942). This month The Blue-Tail Fly turned up in a Burl Ives collection of rediscovered ballads (The Wayfarin' Stranger; Leeds Music Corp., $1). And last week Burl sang it for the movies. Only...