Man-made rot is eating at the heart of nature, we are despoiling the heritage of our sons, our grandsons, and their grandsons.
And now — direct from England — the world’s most conscientious ecology cartoon feature. A little overstated for our American tastes, perhaps, but full of real meat, nonetheless. Ah, if we only had a cartoon series like this on our side of the pond! But, since we don’t MOTHER EARTH NEWS presents Mr. Crabtree Crusades! Read this issue’s entire comic strip here.
Man vs Nature
The balance of life and the turning of the food-energy
cycle worked perfectly in the original wilderness. It could
wandering, grown crops instead of hunting. When he did, man vs nature
caused great ruptures in nature’s balance. But nature is
adaptable as long as her most important law is
observed — that what comes from the soil must be returned to
the soil. Over the many centuries farming man has observed
that law and nature has accepted him in partnership. This
has changed in our time. Chemical farming now takes from
the soil but does not return to the soil what it has taken.
So, year by year, the soil is made poorer, the humus
destroyed. Now we are paying the price.
The havoc that sprays cause can be assessed by looking
where they do not penetrate. The prehistoric ditch is a
deep defile, man-made in the Iron Age, 3,000 years ago. All
about it lie the ravaged farm lands, but in the ditch there
is in miniature the world that Mr. Crabtree remembers. The
scent of wild thyme is on the air and butterflies and
flowers, seldom or never to be seen outside, come in their
seasons. Cowslips and primroses bloom in April, wild orchids
come in May and June. The ditch and all that lives in it have
been spared because has not been worthwhile for anyone to
try to turn its soil into profit. It has been allowed by
that accident to fall into wilderness area, a reminder of
past beauty.