51 strange forest 



ing a plant, even though what it demands is not what 

 most other plants would, the situation is not really sur- 

 prising. A very slight change in temperature, amount of 

 rainfall, or any one of a number of other things, would 

 no doubt react sharply upon it. 



Already the heyday is past. As old specimens die there 

 are fewer new ones to take their place. Gradually the 

 forests are thinning out and though measures are being 

 taken to protect so unique an example of the wonders of 

 creation, it seems likely enough that the saguaro is doomed, 

 at least sometime during the centuries to come. That also, 

 however, is not too surprising. Ecologists have long rec- 

 ognized the fact that too high a degree of specialization 

 is usually fatal to a species whether it be plant or animal. 

 The more adaptable kinds roll with the punches when 

 conditions change. But no matter how perfectly a plant 

 or animal may be suited to some very narrow range of 

 conditions, it is almost certain to be helpless when either 

 man or the slow evolution of the earth's surface changes 

 those conditions only slightly. 



Thus the great ivory billed woodpecker will almost cer- 

 tainly be extinct in a few years if it is not extinct already. 

 It must have great forests with many dead trees. Great 

 forests are shrinking and even in those that remain, good 

 forestry which requires the removal of dead wood is bad 

 forestry for the ivory bill. Meanwhile the very adaptable 

 English sparrow survived even the disappearance of the 

 horse and, according to reliable report, has in places taken 

 to haunting filling stations for the purpose of picking in- 

 sects from the radiators of the very automobiles which 

 drove the horse, its former supplier, from the roads. 



One wonders what will happen to the gilded flicker. 



