The following is my translation of an article called: Etwas vom Gleichgewicht in der Natur von Cornel Schmitt. It appeared in a German popular science magazine, Kosmos Handweiser für Naturfreunde 1924, Heft 5, Seiten 139-140. I'm not aware of any previous translation.
Trevor Dykes.

Something on balance in nature by Cornel Schmitt
I brought my boys a few giant poppy capsules, and we busied ourselves with establishing the number of seeds in one capsule. On average, this turned out to be 3,000.

This led to a few considerations: What would happen if each of these seeds resulted in descendants, and then to the similar result for six years of unrestricted fertility?

The result shocks even young people used to hyperinflation, with its inhuman number of zeros.

It would be about 2,100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 seeds. And to express this in terms of space, that would be around 700,000,000,000,000,000,000cm³. And if we spread all the seeds on the ground to a uniform depth of 1cm? Would the surface of our continent, with its 10 million cm², be sufficient?

Result: 7,000 continents the size of our continent of Europe could be covered with a uniform depth of 70cm. All our forests and cities would sink in this sea of poppy seeds, and only the tallest of buildings would rise out of it.

The boys understand: The unrestrained growth of this one plant would mean the death for all other organisms. The balance of nature must not be disturbed.

That is, of course, only a hypothetical example, and it will now be extended by practicalities.

Last summer, field mice in Franconia bred so strongly that they posed a danger to the field crops. All kinds of means were unsuccessfully tried. But nature came to the assistance. In late autumn, I saw 12 Mouse buzzards circling above a tiny wood in a field. They could not possibly have been born there. They had hurried in from distant areas in order to take places at the richly spread table and, in association with the owls, they pursued a bloody butchery among the mice.

Let us assume that the winter would not bring in a period of quickly developing frost after a time of rain. The spring would still be able to great a good quantity of the destructive rodents. The buzzards could continue to feast and, consequently, would increase so strongly, that feeding on mice would no longer provide enough. They would have to seek a new area of activity, and the balance of nature would be restored.

But how did it come to be, that the mice were able to increase so strongly? Did they also, in earlier times before the people practiced agriculture, sometimes occur in such uncountable numbers? Is it not people, with their unnatural production levels of some crops, who brought the plague upon themselves? Yes, they caused the original disturbance in the balance of nature. Therefore, they had to carry the consequences.-

As for the farmer and the field, so the forest is exploited by the forester. He has forgotten that nature wants a mixed forest. But people think only of their own advantage and restrict an area to, for example, only pine forests because they grow more quickly and profitably, and the trees can be felled in 70-90 years. Nature takes vengeance for this sin. In a mixed forest, the trees cannot be eaten bare by damaging insects (eg. by the Black arches moth).

The island of St Helena was discovered in 1500. Already, by 1513, the Portuguese had introduced goats. Where thick forest spread earlier is today only bare rock. The goats prevent the growth of young trees. The disappearance of the forest has led to the extinction of many insects, birds, snails and so on, as they no longer have anywhere to live. This is the fault of human intervention.-

In Jamaica, the sugar harvests continually dropped because of an ever increasing plague of rats. One introduced the mongoose from East India, a highly valued rat killer and an otter-like animal. The rats did decrease, but the monogoose adapted and also fed on birds, wildlife, and even young domestic animals, and also attacked pineapples, bananas, maize and, after twenty years, it was a no less feared country plague. Furthermore, damaging insects increased as the birds decreased. Now the mongoose causes significantly more harm than the eradicated rats could ever have managed.

A similar example was recently experienced by us in Europe. A Bohemian nobleman introduced the muskrat from America, which is highly prized for its fur. (See the articles about muskrats in Handweiser from the years 1916, 1917, 1919, 1920 and 1921.) While they were plant-eaters in their homeland, they attacked the easily caught fish in the domestic ponds of Bohemia, and caused more damage with their constant digging, as the fishponds could no longer retain their water. As one had not simultaneously introduced the enemy of muskrats, they increased into uncountable figures. Among other places, they have already appeared in Lower Franconia.-

In regions where the fox has been wiped out hare hunting is in decline, and this is because the fox concentrates particularly on the sick animals and, therefore, prevents the spread of hare plagues.-

Where on cuts down the hedges for far and wide, birds can no longer survive; and that leads to plagues of insects. In the places where Berlepsch hung up nesting boxes for birds there was plenty of fruit; however, elsewhere in the area, insects impaired the growth of fruit,-

The consequences of senseless mole hunting a few years ago, will certainly come to make themselves unpleasantly felt. That is for sure, because nature must keep in balance. No creation can increase overly at the expense of the other. Whoever disturbs the law of nature will have to pay the consequences.

An index of more of my translations of old Kosmos articles can be found at:

Kosmos Translations Archive

A number of Mesozoic (and post-Mesozoic) location summaries can be found at Localities.