Animals without Backbones

What is a Bug? For this book, any animal that is not a Beast: the whole invertebrate realm, from the humble amoeba, through insects (more than half the book), to octopuses and sea-squirts (the distant forbears of you and me, lords and ladies of creation). Its scope, as with Flora Britannica and Birds Britiannica, is the parts that Bugs play in the human story: what they do to humannity with stings and jaws and injected saliva, what humanity does to them in the field and kitchen, their names (especially Gaelic), their roles in folklore, literature, art, music, films and photography. It is a book to enjoy at random, not to read from cover to cover.

There have been many books in this field. Amateur scientitsts, from bishops to the young Darwin, to a lunatic pseudo-Countess, used to give their lives’ leisure to finding and distinguishing hundreds of obscure Bugs. When I was little I loved C.M.