For Many a Spring

To an admiring friend, Rachel Carson, 56, was "a nun of nature, a votary of all outdoors." She also had a rare gift for transmuting scientific fact into lucid, lyrical language. Yet it was only in 1951, after 15 years with the Fish and Wildlife Service--much of the time as editor in chief of its publications--that she published her famous book The Sea Around Us. It was written in hypnotic, susurrant prose; it brimmed with intriguing knowledge; and for a book aimed at a popular audience, it was hard to fault scientifically. The Sea stayed on the bestseller lists for 86 weeks and won for its author a worldwide reputation as a gentle spokeswoman for nature.

The Sea Around Us brought Rachel Carson fame and fortune but not much happiness. A marine biologist by training, she never married ("because I didn't have time"), lived with her ailing mother and an orphaned grandnephew whom she adopted. After resigning from her Washington job, she wrote another successful book, The Edge of the Sea, and though painfully shy lectured widely. Then, about six years ago, her old friends Stuart and Olga Huckins complained that anti-mosquito spraying had damaged birds in the two-acre nature sanctuary that they maintain near Duxbury, Mass. Thus was born Silent Spring.

Who Knows? It was Rachel Carson's last and most controversial book. Published in 1962, it took 41 years to research and write. Early in this period she knew that she had cancer. During that time she also became passionately convinced that chemicals, in her words, "are the sinister and little-recognized partners of radiation in changing the very nature of the world--the very nature of life." Dramatically, she pictured a time when the sprays, dusts and aerosols used to control insects, fungi and other foes of plant life would "still the song of birds and the leaping of fish in the streams," finally bringing on the silent spring of her title.

To its author, it was more than a book; it became a crusade. And, despite her scientific training, she rejected facts that weakened her case, while using almost any material, regardless of authenticity, that seemed to support her thesis. Her critics, who included many eminent scientists, objected that the book's exaggerations and emotional tone played on the vague fears of city dwellers, the bulk of the U.S. population, who have little contact with uncontrolled nature and do not know how unpleasantly hostile it generally is. Many passages mentioned cancer, whose cause is still mysterious. Who knows? suggested the book. Could one cause of the disease be pesticides?

Cool Consideration. Nonetheless, Silent Spring was a runaway bestseller and an extremely effective polemic that stirred fierce argument, from village councils to the halls of Congress. Laws were proposed on local, state and federal levels to put rigid restrictions on the use of pesticides. Some of them were so sweeping that if they had been passed and enforced, they might very well have caused serious harm. In advanced modern societies, agriculture and public health can no longer manage without chemical pesticides.

In spite of clamorous pressure, Congress has not acted so far. Rachel Carson's poignant death last week at her home in Silver Spring, Md., after years of suffering, came at a time when the whole problem was under cool consideration. It seems likely now that any law which may finally be passed to regulate pesticides--some of which are really dangerous--will be reasonable and constructive. For her luminous life of The Sea, and for her part in wakening her countrymen to the possible perils from pesticides and other chemicals, Rachel Carson may be remembered for many a spring after the passions she aroused have subsided.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.