Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Passages from Silent Spring




Here’s a list of passages from Silent Spring I’d like you to read:


Chapter 1:  “A Fable for Tomorrow” (entire chapter)

Chapter 2: “The Obligation to Endure”
1st section, from “The History of Life on earth” to “along with the insects” and the final three paragraphs of the chapter, from “It is not my contention….” to “gives us the right to know.”

Chapter 3: “Elixirs of Death”
Beginning from” For the first time” to end of first section:  “are dispensed.”
Middle of the chapter from paragraph “Aldrin, like most of this group….” to end of this section “that any useful degree of recovery will occur.”
Skip next section, move on to the section thereafter, beginning with “In Greek mythology the sorceress Medea” to end of section, “Perhaps this is the next step.”

Chapter 4:  “Surface Waters and Underground Seas”
Beginning of the chapter, “Of all our natural resources” to end of first section, “is pollution of water everywhere.”
Paragraph in the middle of the next section:  ‘Water must also be thought of…” to end of paragraph, “cycles of nature.”

Chapter 5:   “Realms of the Soil”
Beginning of the chapter from “The thin layers” to 14th paragraph, ending with “has been largely ignored.”

Chapter 6:  “Earth’s Green Mantle”
Read chapter from beginning to end of 8th section, ending with “drenching of the landscapes with chemicals.”

Chapter 7: “Needless Havoc”
Read the entire first section, from the beginning (“As man proceeds….”) to the end (“a science project) and the last section of the chapter, from “Incidents like…” to “diminished as a human being?”

Chapter 8:  “And No Birds Sing”
Read the end of the chapter, from “As the habit of killing grows” to “deep and imperative.”

Chapter 9: “Rivers of Death”
Read paragraph in the middle of the chapter, from “There are ways to solve this problem” to “the only way nor the best way.”

Chapter 10:  ‘Indiscriminately from the Skies”
Beginning of the chapter, “From small beginnings” to “Neither program has achieved its goal.”

Chapter 11: “Beyond the Dreams of the Borgias”
Beginning of the chapter:  ‘The contamination of the world” to end of section: “small children tumbling over the grass with a dog”

Chapter 12: “The Human Price”
Beginning of chapter:  “As the tide of chemicals” to end of second section, "vast amount of research in widely separated fields”

Chapter 14: “One In Every Four”
Read the last section in the chapter, from “Human exposure…” to the end of the chapter,
“prevention is the imperative need.”

Chapter 15, “Nature Fights Back”
Read the first section, from “To have risked” to end of section, “by insecticidal drift.”

Chapter 16:  “The Rumblings of an Avalanche”
Read the final section, from “Darwin himself” to end “conceit here.”

Chapter 17:  “The Other Road”
Final section, “Through all these new” to “against the earth.”

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