A Multitude of Living Things

Too many of us go through the world with our eyes closed. All around us — in the air, in the earth, on the surface of ponds and streams — is a multitude of living things that we never notice. Dr. and Mrs. Milne keep their eyes open, and their cameras close at hand, whether they are in the woods, at the seashore, or in their own back yard. They have watched, with curiosity and understanding, the habits of insects, crustaceans, and small mammals, and reported on their findings with clarity and humor.

This volume of essays on widely varying aspects of natural history contains an astonishing amount of curious information: Birds and frogs have three eyelids, the great blue whale has eyes the size of a grapefruit, frogs can pull their eyes into their heads until they bulge downward in the mouth, a crab’s pincers are “ knife and fork, and spade and hod, a means of making love and war and home and music.” A flatworm, parasitic in birds, must spend part of its life cycle in the evestalks of snails; and protozoans living in the digestive tract of termites break up wood pulp for their hosts. There are four insects which are never found except on pitcher plants, and would become extinct should pitcher plants vanish from the earth.

The detailed life histories are easy reading: A caddis-fly larva making itself a tube or case is described as though it were a seamstress or a carpenter. There is an amazing account of a sexton beetle burying a sparrow; and the plant gall caused by the grub of a wasp is compared to an apartment house, furnished and serviced by the plant. One chapter discusses fossils, and another the fossilized insect and plant remains found in amber.

Photographs made by the authors present some of the small creatures many times natural size. A Multitude of Living Things is good observation, good writing, and good reading for either the amateur or professional naturalist.

LUCILE Q. MANN