This is the best book on Insects that I've ever read. It was written in 1956 by Alice Gray of the American Museum of Natural History, who was my pen-pal for fifteen years.
This book is very hard to find. Mine is the tenth printing. But the eighth printed edition is found online in Archive.org, so you can read it HERE.
"Insects are alive. They aren't viruses, and they aren't plants, so they have to be animals. They hatch from eggs. They move about. They breathe, eat, sleep and grow. They see, hear, taste, smell and feel the world around them - or act as though they do. They find mates, lay their own eggs, and die. They do all the things other animals do, but they do them in ways which are all their own.
"Think of moving, for example. We do it by means of muscles attached to a framework of stiff bones with joints between them. All our organs are suspended from this framework, and the whole is covered with a soft elastic skin.
"If this is how bodies ought to be built, then insects are inside out!"
And the wonderful thing about Alice Gray, as shown by our being pen-pals for fifteen years, is that she was willing to do all this work for just one person!
No comments:
Post a Comment
Would love to here from you.
No spam or links, please.