158 Trans, Acad. Sci. of St. Louis 
(A) INTRODUCTION. 
“‘Tiving things are real things—but their reality 1s 
in their interrelations with the rest of nature, and not in 
themselves.’’—Brooks. 
The ecologist, when he wishes to study the interrela- 
tions of a fauna to a restricted area, usually selects a 
virgin plot, uncontaminated and undisturbed by the hand 
of man. The area which I have studied is unique in that 
it has been created by man. These pages will reveal that 
the invertebrate population readily responded to this 
man-made habitat and lost no opportunity to utilize il to 
advantage. Despite the fact that the clay bank here re- 
ferred to was artificially built, the attraction to it of the 
life about the area for nesting and other purposes was 
legitimate, and this made the place a biotic unit of un- 
usual interest. 
I have given to the unit a layman’s study of ecology, 
made without the technical and refined instrumental ex- 
aminations and prepared without the use of new and 
complex terms so often introduced into a study of this 
kind, which, in my opinion take commonplace phenomena 
and place them beyond the understanding of the layman. 
By trying to become familiar with complex and unusual 
terms, one often loses the thread of the story of the in- 
terrelations of the inhabitants. In other words, this 
paper is, I hope, analogous to the study of the stars 
through an opera glass, instead of a study by mathe- 
matical formulae. 
The ecological unit under discussion lay in a little 
valley at the station of Wickes, twenty-two miles south 
of St. Louis on the Iron Mountain Railroad. The Mera- 
