INSECTS AND SPIDERS

Full-color illustrations of insects, some of them magnified as much as 10 or 20 times, demonstrate that it is possible to show things in a larger scale, but without providing much more information. Though a house spider magnified to 10 times its natural size may enthrall the browser, the prosaic text is only marginally successful in describing anatomy, life cycles, or habits of common spiders and insects like butterflies, moths, mayflies, beetles, grasshoppers. Scientific names are not given, and the index is sketchy and sometimes inaccurate: earwigs, silverfish, and fleas are all illustrated and discussed on pages 20 and 21, but only the earwig is indexed for those pages; fleas are not indexed at all, and silverfish are indexed for page 12, where they are not mentioned. Sloppy work.