Book Review

Page 1

BOOK REVIEW

THE BROADS by E . A . ELLIS

(Published by Collins, in the New Naturalist

Series, at 35/-)

THE publication in 1965 of this work was an outstanding event not only for East Anglian naturalists but will be a source book of information to all naturalists whatever are their special interests— geology, Vegetation, vertebrate and invertebrate animals (Polyzoa, Leeches, Mollusca, Woodlice and Harvestmen, Insects, Fishes, Amphibians and Reptiles, Birds and Mammals). The final part is about the Activities of Man in Broadland. There are excellent maps of all the Broads showing their recession from 1839-40 to 1880-4 to 1946, and discussion of the different types of broad and how and why they came to be. T h e numerous füll page illustrations are delightful whether of tools used in ditching, coypu, water shrew and water vole, bearded tit and grasshopper warbler, bittern and many other birds. The milky slug and black slug are delightfully at home on their food plants, but I cannot say the same of glow-worms having their entrails devoured by a parasitic fungus—fine though the picture of the process is. Some of the characteristic plants of the Broads are more to my taste. I believe it has taken Mr. Ellis many years of work in his fastness on Wheatfen Broad to assemble all this varied material since his retirement from the Norwich Museum. Suffolk is proud to claim him as one of us as well as Norfolk. J.C.N.W. PUBLICATION RECEIVED Senckenbergiana Biologica Band 47 Nummer I, etc. Note. This number is devoted to spiders and carries an article in English by our member Dr. E. A. G. Duffey and an account in German of the I l l r d European Congress on Arachnology at Frankfurt-am-Main in April, 1965. Dr. Duffey appears in the photograph of the fifty-eight representatives of Societies of twelve countries in Europe, including Britain.


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