Collins New Generation Guide to the Birds of Britain and Europe

Fülszöveg

Foreword
by Sir David Attenborough
What is a field guide? It is, surely, a small book that you take into the field to help you identify the naturally-occurring things that you may find there - a bird, a flower, a butterfly. The New Generation Guides certainly claim to do that.
But they also aim to do more. Even while we are leafing through the pages of a guide, trying to track down what we have seen, we may be wondering why on earth apparently dissimilar species are grouped together in a particular family, and why the families are listed in the order that they are. If there is no rational explanation, then classification will appear to be arbitrary, incomprehensible and therefore, in the end, dull. But there are such explanations. They lie in the way that the group of organisms concerned is thought to have evolved. So the first short section in these new guides explains just that.
The Directory that follows, the central core of each book, contains in a specially concise and... Tovább

Fülszöveg

Foreword
by Sir David Attenborough
What is a field guide? It is, surely, a small book that you take into the field to help you identify the naturally-occurring things that you may find there - a bird, a flower, a butterfly. The New Generation Guides certainly claim to do that.
But they also aim to do more. Even while we are leafing through the pages of a guide, trying to track down what we have seen, we may be wondering why on earth apparently dissimilar species are grouped together in a particular family, and why the families are listed in the order that they are. If there is no rational explanation, then classification will appear to be arbitrary, incomprehensible and therefore, in the end, dull. But there are such explanations. They lie in the way that the group of organisms concerned is thought to have evolved. So the first short section in these new guides explains just that.
The Directory that follows, the central core of each book, contains in a specially concise and tabulated form all the details that are necessary for the identification of what we find.
But having answered the question 'What?' we may then want to know 'Why?' Why is there a difference in the appearance of the sexes in this
species but not in that? Why does it occur here but not there? Why does this flower have a fragrant scent, and that one smell unpleasant? Why does this bird migrate over long distances, while that one stays in the same area throughout its life? The books that discuss such issues are for the most part large and heavy, and certainly far too bulky to be carried around the countryside with ease. Yet it is in the field that such questions are likely to come into our minds.
So the New Generation Guides contain, after the Directory, an Encyclopedia. This traces the life of organisms from birth, germination or hatching, to maturity, reproduction and the final death of the individual. And cross-references lead from the Directory, where a species has been identified, to the Encyclopedia, where its features that are of particular interest are explored in detail.
In short, the aim of the New Generation Guides is not only to identify but also to make sense of what we encounter in the countryside. In that way, we hope they will enable their readers to discover a deeper meaning in animals and plants than just their names, and therefore find in them a new delight. Vissza