facts are the seeds that later produce knowledge and wisdom, then the emotions and the impressions of the senses are the fertile soil in which the se… - Rachel Carson

The figure is staggering and its implications are not easily grasped-500 new chemicals to which the bodies of men and animals are required somehow to adapt each year, chemicals totally outside the limits of biologic experience.

Between low water and the flotsam and jetsam of the high-tide mark, land and sea wage a never-ending conflict for possession.

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.