dunes is some magnificent country Jiui J paradise for ornitholo- 

 gists, with extensive canebrakes covering acres of standing; 

 water. These at first sij;ht appear almost sterile but on closer 

 inspection prove to support a wonderful life all their own 



All you see at first are the ubiquitous red-winged blackbirds 

 dancing about at the tops of the waving cane stems, often off- 

 setting the gusts of wind and the waving of the stems by opening 

 their wings A friend of mine, an engineer, who is not partial to 

 bird-watching, occupied his leisure some years ago by trying to 

 work out a formula for this performance by the birds. He rapidly 

 got into higher mathematics and came up with an idea thai 

 seemed to excite him He got the notion from these blackbirds 

 that there was still a lot of important information about flying 

 machines of all kinds to be derived from the study of flexible 

 models, attached to freely movable and flexible bases or stems. 

 in infinitely unpredictable and varying winds This proposition 

 did not sound particularly inspiring, but one unexpected fact did 

 emerge from what he said This was that the blackbirds managed 

 to preserve their equilibrium mechanically and apparently solely 

 by reflex actions Therefore, he argued, a mechanical device 

 could do the same if it had a built-in "nervous system" of a 

 special kind designed along the reflex-motor circuits of these 

 birds. This was many years ago. and the thought germ seeded 

 and bore fruit; for my friend ended by designing a system that, 

 by a complex arrangement of electronically controlled feedbacks, 

 kept a model on an erratically agitated pedestal quite stable even 

 when subjected to equally erratic wind pressures from any angle. 

 It is a comparable system that guides self-guided missiles. 



Among the stems of the canes are to be found a whole galaxy 

 of interesting little creatures. Birds of the rail family, obviously 

 designed for going through things, abound, and they have the 

 habit of standing stock still with their long, thin beaks pointed 

 skyward, thereby giving as perfect an imitation of a cane as any 

 non-botanical body could. There is a small mouse—a variety of 

 Harvest Mouse. Reithrodontomys, a name almost exactly the 

 length in typescript of the animal's head and body— that builds 

 a cozy, spherical, and tiny nest around three or four reed stems 

 above the water, in which it lives all year round. These nests 

 may be miles inside the hearts of perpetually flooded reed beds 

 or canebrakes. and their minute inhabitants spend their entire 

 lives— and have spent quite a part of their more recent evolu- 

 tion—in a sort of endless acrobatic, semiaerial gymnastic, for 

 they loathe water and are bad swimmers. They feed on the 

 flowers, seeds, and shoots of the reeds, grasses, and canes; but 

 they also eat many of the multitudinous snails that live in or 

 just above the water and lay their eggs on the stems, as well as 

 many insects— and, it is alleged, the eggs and young of small 

 birds, and even each other on occasion. 



n 



LO! THE GRASS 



The main body of this southeastern coastal plain appears to be 

 absolutely flat and level, but it is really composed of a series of 

 broad terraces mounting by very slight elevations toward the 

 fall line. It is clothed in a more or less continuous blanket of 

 pines with meandering, open fields of short grass. There are two 

 schools of thought regarding the original nature of this country. 

 One is that grass is man-induced by the felling or burning of 



The Southern pine forests stretch for hundreds of miles, 

 sometimes as closed stands, sometimes as parklands with 

 short grass below. There is almost no other vegetation. 



