BIOLOGIC BALANCE ON THE FARM 



By W. L. McAteb 

 v. S. Biological Survey 



[With 2 plates] 



Biologic balance is the term heard today for what yesterday was 

 called the balance of nature. Some would so closely associate the 

 condition with yesterday, as to deny its present existence. That is, 

 however, not exactly what they mean. What they really have in 

 mind is that the primitive balance of nature such as obtained in 

 America in precolonial times has been destroyed by civilized man 

 and under his domination cannot return. 



That may well be, for in all probability man's abrupt and whole- 

 sale remodeling of the landscape and his ruthless interference with 

 its plant and animal inhabitants can never be assimilated into 

 nature's more deliberately adjusted system of checks and balances. 

 No sooner, however, does man's disturbing influence anywhere cease 

 than recovery begins. 



Unless all fertility has been swept away, bare ground is soon 

 occupied by weeds. Grasses come in next and if there is enough 

 moisture they are followed in time by shrubs and trees. Cut-over 

 woodland, if not too much damaged by fire, will produce a new crop 

 of trees in a human generation. Practically all of the deciduous 

 forest in the eastern United States is this so-called second growth — 

 a vast tribute to nature's power of recovery. 



Where a little herbage is established, insects will be attracted, and 

 soon birds will drop in to snap them up. Wlien the grasses and 

 weeds make a fair crop of seeds, mice will come to take toll, and when 

 there are enough mice, weasels will prey upon them. Juicy greens 

 and the tender shoots and bark of shrubs will draw cottontails, and 

 in turn the bunnies attract foxes. 



None of these things happen suddenly, nor until the way has been 

 prepared for them. They come about in a gradual and orderly man- 

 ner, that is, naturally, in the truest sense of the word. As a phi- 

 losopher once put it, "Nature abhors a vacuum," but these hard 

 words mean, in the present connection, only that life pushes in any- 

 where it has a chance. All life provides food for other life, and it 



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