236 



CHARLES S. YENTSCH 

 produced. Organisms photosynthesizing in this aramonia 

 atmosphere are going to essentially fix less carbon per 

 unit oxygen than organisms fixing carbon in waters where 

 the primary nitrogen source is nitrate. So one has to be 

 very careful how the assimilation coefficient is applied 

 in this carbon calculation. Again I emphasize, and I 

 think that the biologists involved would agree here, that 

 this is a rather primitive method for determining carbon 

 fixation. These data would have been much, much more sig- 

 nificant if radioactive Carbon lA had been utilized. 



Finally I would like to say that proceedings 

 of this Conference have amazed me as an outsider. In the 

 part of the world I come from, which is in New England, 

 people generally like to pride themselves on being indi- 

 viduals. The idea of cooperation at times takes on sort 

 of dirty meanings. Some time back I became involved in a 

 pollution study that involved two organisms, the oyster 

 and the duck, if you can imagine this. The story is this: 



The duck farmers of Long Island are very 

 proud of their ducks, they like to have them big and flat 

 and fat and fluffy at the time they go to the market. 

 They force feed them initially by pouring on the Wheaties; 

 in the process much of it conoes out the other end rather 

 untouched. This is washed into the embayments along Long 



