The Field Naturalist's Handbook (Classic Reprint)

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Excerpt from The Field Naturalist's Handbook Now, it is absolutely impossible to be a practical insect-hunter or egg-collector without learning something of the plants on which insects feed, or the trees on which the majority of birds build. It is useless to read that certain caterpillars feed upon certain plants unless the plants can be recognised, as well as the caterpillars, and their probable localities known. Nor can the names of trees be any guide to the nests of the birds that build in them if the reader does not know an elm from an ash. I have therefore placed Zoology and Botany side by side in the present work, and made it a guide to the plants and trees as much as to the insects and nests. I have already stated in the preface that, as far as possible, the arrangement of insects and plants is by months, the former being reckoned by their period of appearance in the perfect state, and the latter by their time of ¿owering. In an extremely variable climate, however, such dates can only be approximate, as a mild winter and warm spring will hasten the advent both of insects and plants, while a severe winter and cold spring will retard them. The reader, however, will find that, taking one year with another, the dates here given will be tolerably correct. As the birds lay their eggs somewhere about the same time of year, and could be crowded into a very few months, the arrangement is that of their natural order, and not of seasons. It is true that several birds will rear more than one brood in the same year, but even in such cases the first brood only is mentioned, as the number of broods is dependent upon external conditions, such as the temperature of the season, the supply of food, and freedom from disturbance. In order to compress the work within the limits of a portable Handbook, a few abbreviations have been used. Most of them are familiar to entomologists, but I will brie¿y explain them, so that the reader may have no trouble with them. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.