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<br />16 HISTORY OF CONSERVATION IN THE MISSOURI VALLEY
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<br />factor in the balance between animal life and vegetable life.
<br />Animals used the oxygen in the air and exhaled the carbon diox-
<br />ide needed by vegetable life. Fire, burning oxygen, left a resi-
<br />due of carbon dioxide and so contributed to plant life. In 'other
<br />ways fire made additional contributions, It is possible that light-
<br />ning-caused fires destroyed, or limited many scrub trees, buck
<br />brush and thorny unpalatable vegetation and also protected
<br />the great meadows from the encroach-trespassing forest,
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<br />The complicated interwoven life and dependency of flow-
<br />ers, insects and birds is well known to all of us. The orderly life
<br />of fish in the lake, and grass consuming mammals on the plains
<br />has been noted. We find the same order among birds whose
<br />feet are planned for swimming, for scratching soil, for grasp-
<br />ing prey or Hanging to walls or trees. The bills of aquatic birds
<br />are flat spoon-shaped; insect hunters pointed and strong, for
<br />wood digging or moderately pointed for eating seeds; or beaked
<br />for eating flesh,
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<br />The rabbit is, a consumer of all grasses, At the southern end
<br />of the valley he has atdifterent intervals gotten'out of balance. In
<br />the old days he was held 'in check by the wildcat, fox and coyote.'
<br />In turn the cat family is held in proportion by the fact that the
<br />male destroys the young.
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<br />A visit to a prairie dog town is always interesting. The
<br />tendency of location seems to be a hard clay soil with ground
<br />water from ten to twenty feet beneath the surface, land, by the
<br />way, of secondary grazing value, The second bench along a
<br />, river valley or the flat drift area of a large draw are common
<br />locations. As complicated underground passages later lead to
<br />erosion, the tendency is to widen the valley and lower the delta
<br />of the draw. The prairie dog is of course a rodent and very pro-
<br />, lific, and we would expect nature to provide a means to limit
<br />his increase. We find that, like the rabbit, the young is unpro-
<br />tected and that snakes and ground owls living in the town in
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