568 MAN AS A CONQUEROR 



anxiety to obtain cheaper building materials. He makes mistakes 

 and those mistakes cost him dearly. 



Other factors enter into the picture. The biologist knows that the 

 insects which inhabited this earth millions of years before man came 

 on it have been, and still are, the most successful group of animal?. 

 They are adapted in many ways to escape enemies. They reproduce 

 in great numbers and very frequently. They are omnivorous feeders, 

 and numerically they outnumber all the other species of animals. 

 Dr. Howard in a recent work ^ points out the fact that while man has 

 jumped to the fore through his intelligence, this same intelligence 

 may ultimately be his undoing, because he is giving to his insect com- 

 petitors through his agricultural presents to them more and more 

 food and thus opportunity for more rapid increase. These facts 

 certainly should make us question man's supremacy, unless he can 

 plan more wisely for the future. 



There are many agencies working toward the goal of man's ultimate 

 conquest of his natural environment. Most of these agencies are 

 well directed, sane, and based on the best findings of science. But 

 man, with his foibles, his illogical thinking, his greed and selfishness, 

 introduces other factors. Particularly we have in this democracy of 

 ours the leadership of the politician, the grafter, and mercenary 

 private interests to contend with. To fight these obstructive forces 

 we must know the facts and then go ahead as real scientists, prepared 

 to use the facts w^isely. The pages that follow should help clarify our 

 thinking concerning some of the problems of economic biology and 

 biological conservation. 



Has Man Conquered His Environment? 



A little over three hundred years ago our Pilgrim forefathers landed 

 on the shores of Massachusetts Bay. They found wooded lands, 

 rocky hills, with clear streams winding through shallow valleys filled 

 with heavy undergrowth. The land was gradually cleared, farms were 

 established, and settlements came into being. Today the countryside 

 looks very different from the days when those colonists reached an 

 inhospitable shore. And yet in the last fifty years, changes have been 

 going on that are beginning to show how nature takes a part even 

 when man has seemingly made a complete conquest of the land which 

 he set out to conquer. In the last half century many New York and 

 New England farms have been abandoned, the countryside between 



' Howard, L. O., The Insect Menace, Century Company, 1934. 



