ANIMAL TRAVELERS

Without a focus on a single species, we learn only some of the wheres and whens of migration in this fuzzy look at a representative group: barren-ground caribou, barn swallows, painted lady butterflies, and gray whales. The hows and whys--patterns of movement in migratory animals, the instinct which tells them to go--are passed over lightly or totally ignored. In places the text is unclear. We are told that most painted ladies move northward generation-by-generation but are left wondering why they haven't all disappeared somewhere in the Arctic. The author's illustrations are neither informative nor even evocative. Lichen, properly described, is drawn first as an isolated plant without any indication of its scale or habitat, and later as a mass of green and yellow splotches unaccountably identical to ""southern fields"" elsewhere. A scatter-shot approach in this brief format sacrifices understanding for the semblance of breadth.