When man undertakes for some sordid purpose to disturb the balance of
natural forces concerned in the conservation and in the destruction
of life on this planet he is all too likely to err. For example, when
some public-spirited Australian, observing a dearth of donkeys in his
great lone land, thoughtfully imported a shipload of rabbits, believing
that they would grow up with the country, learn to carry loads and
eventually bray, he performed a disservice to his fellow colonists
which they would gladly requite by skinning him alive if they could
lay hands on him. It is well known that our thoughtless extermination
of the American Indian has been followed by an incalculable increase
of the grasshoppers which once served him as food. So strained is
the resulting situation that some of our most prominent seers are
baffled in attempting to forecast the outcome; and it is said that
the Secretary of Agriculture holds that farming on this continent is
doomed unless we take to a grasshopper diet ourselves.
The matter lends itself to facile illustration: one could multiply
instances to infinity. We might cite the Australian ladybird, which
was by twenty well defined and several scientists brought here and
acclimated at great expense to feed upon a certain fruit pest, but
which, so far, has confined its ravages mainly to the fruit.
The latest, and in some ways the most striking, instance of the peril
of making a redistribution of the world’s fauna, is supplied by the
beautiful tropical isle of Jamaica, home of the Demon Rum. It appears
that someone in Jamaica was imperfectly enamored of the native rats,
which are creatures of eminent predacity, intrepid to a degree that
is most disquieting. This person introduced from a foreign land the
mongoose—an animal whose name it seems prudent to give in the singular
number. The mongoose, as is well known, is affected with an objection
to rats compared with which the natural animosity of a dog to another
dog is a mild passion indeed, and that of a collector of customs to
holy water seems hardly more than a slight coolness. Jamaica is now
ratless, but, alas, surpassingly tickful. The ticks have so multiplied
upon the face of the earth that man and beast are in equal danger of
extinction. The people hardly dare venture out-of-doors to plant the
rum vine and help the north-bound steamers to take on monkeys. The
mongoose alone is immune to ticks.
It appears that when this creature had effaced the rats it was itself
threatened with effacement from lack of comestible suited to its
tooth; but instead of wasting its life in repinings and unavailing
regrets—instead of yielding to the insidious importunities of
nostalgia, it fell upon the lizards and banqueted royally if roughly;
and soon the lizards had gone to join the rats in the Unknown. Now,
the Jamaica lizard had for countless ages “wittled free” upon ticks,
maintaining among them a high death-rate with which, apparently, their
own dietetic excesses (for ticks are greatly addicted to the pleasures
of the table) had nothing to do. The lizard abating his ravages,
through being himself abated by the mongoose, the tick holds dominion
by the unchallenged authority of numbers. Man, the whilom tyrant, flees
to his mountain fastnesses, the rum vine withers in the fields and the
north-bound steamer sails monkeyless away. Jamaica’s last state is
worse than her first and almost as bad as ours. She is as yet, however,
spared the last and lowest humiliation that a brave and generous people
can experience; her parasites do not pose as patriots, nor tickle the
vanity of those whom they bleed.
Transcriber’s Notes:
- Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
- Blank pages have been removed.
- A few obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected.