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Ralph B. Swain THE INSECT GUIDE
Doubleday & Company B0016APZVW Hardcover Good
B0016APZVW Hardcover, no dust jacket, 1952, Doubleday and Company, author: Ralph B. Swain, Ph.D, illustrator, SuZan N. Swain, 261 pages, red-orange cover with gilded, if slightly worn picture of butterflies. Full title: The Insect Guide: Orders And Major Families of North American Insects. Usually ships with delivery confirmation. Where available a photo of the covers has been provided. Hard-to-find copy of the 1952 edition / printing. A relatively lightly used copy, with some typical used book wear, a little abrasion to the top and the bottom of the spine, a couple of small dents to the edges of the covers, loss of gilding or perhaps tarnishing of the title, a fountain pen gift inscription on first title page. A classic insect guide with a number of color plates and drawings for field identification. From the introduction: About 670,000 different kinds of insects have been described since the days of Linnaeus, the inventor of our present system of naming insects, and the total number of species that eventually will be discovered and described is conservatively estimated to be 2,000,000. In short, there are more species of insects than of all other animals taken together. Since there are so many insects that no one can know all of them or a very considerable part of them, any volume or limited series of volumes treating of individual kinds must be highly selective. While admitting that it is impossible for the general reader to become acquainted with more than a comparatively few insect species, the writer believes that it is within the power of any interested person, whether trained in the sciences or not, to learn to recognize the larger groups of insects. It is the purpose of this book to present the insects of North America north of Mexico, in pictures and in non-technical language, at the family rather than at the species level, and to describe as fully as space permits the 'niches' they fill in animal and plant communities. The broad view is usually the more inspiring one - the out-look from a mountaintop, putting rivers and hills, towns and highways in more understandable perspective, always requites the climber. So let us look at the world of insects, seeing only the larger elements of its composition, and hope that in so doing some who hitherto have been appalled and confused by the sheer numbers and diversity of insects will have a pleasurable experience akin to that of the mountaineer who has achieved the summit. *
Price:
14.07 USD
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