Land and Water Bugs of The British Isles - review
Review from Gordon Ramel's
Review page
Southwood and Leston's classic text, 'Land and Water Bugs of the British Isles' is a wonderful set of volumes, which I have used (from library copies) to write some of the pages of this site. It is justifiably called a classic, it is comprehensive, well written and excellently illustrated. It also contains a very useful set of identification keys. It has long been a disappointment of mine that I do not own a copy as it has been out of print for some years and has become a collector's item, making it far too expensive for me. I was well pleased then when Pisces Conservation contacted me and offered me a review copy of their recent reissued electronic version. They have produced this working in co-operation with Prof. Sir Richard Southwood, one of the original authors so I did not expect to be disappointed and I wasn't.
While I will admit I would rather have paper than plastic, because you can't take a CD into the mountains with you to read, this PDF copy is excellent, and once you learn your way around the Acrobat software (which comes included) there is nothing further to do than enjoy it. For the modern computer world a CD version of a book like this is an excellent option, particularly for the images, which are reproduced well here. All the various families of Heteroptera that occur in the UK are discussed and illustrated. It is cheap and good value for money, an undoubtedly useful resource for every teacher in the UK who has students looking at the world around them.
Highly Recommended.
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