The winds, the sea, and the moving tides are what they are. If there is wonder and beauty and majesty in them, science will discover these qualities.… - Rachel Carson

Fish, amphibian, and reptile, warm-blooded bird and mammal-each of us carries in our veins a salty stream in which the elements sodium, potassium, and calcium are combined in almost the same proportions as in sea water.

It is an era dominated by industry, in which the right to make a dollar at whatever cost is seldom challenged. When the public protests, confronted with some obvious evidence of damaging results of pesticide applications, it is fed little tranquilizing pills of half truth. We urgently need an end to these false assurances, to the sugar coating of unpalatable facts. It is the public that is being asked to assume the risks that the insect controllers calculate. The public must decide whether it wishes to continue on the present road, and it can do so only when in full possession of the facts.

There is also a response, not to familiar surroundings, but to cosmic forces. Every fortnight, on the moon's quarter, a batch of eggs is fertilized and taken into the brood chamber to begin its development. And at the same time the larvae that have been made ready during the previous fortnight are expelled into the sea. By this timing-this precise synchronizing with the phases of the moon-the release of young always occurs on a neap tide, when neither the rise nor the fall of the water is of great extent, and even for so small a creature the chances of remaining within the rockweed zone are good.