CHAPTER II 

 ANIMAL HABITATS 



W 



E ARE beginning to rec- 

 ognize the mutual interdependence of widely sep- 

 arated human communities. The golden apple 

 of Paris or the shot of an inconspicuous and other- 

 wise unknown Serbian may set the armies of the 

 world in motion. In the last instance equally 

 unknown Americans, Australians, African ne- 

 groes and Russian peasants who never heard of 

 Serbia are still, after almost two decades, in the 

 process of readjustment from the effects of that 

 shot. 



Similarly, interconnections can be demonstrated 

 among non-human animal communities that are 

 widely distributed; an unusually prolonged, snowy 

 winter in northern Canada may send the northern 

 birds of prey southward to feed upon the mice 

 and small birds over-wintering in the northern 

 United States, or a migrating horde of Egyptian 

 locusts may devastate the African countryside 

 for hundreds of miles and destroy the normal food 

 supply of myriads of unsuspecting local insects. 

 I am not interested here in giving the numerous 



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