WILDLIFE OF BRITAIN

F Fraser Darling

Collins 1943

"A modern appraisal of a country’s wildlife is no dull catalogue of numbers and species. It should be a summary of the innumerable facts comprising the one great fact of man and many other living things inhabiting the same ground, making, maintaining and breaking equalibria, battling and co-operating, acting consciously and unconsciously. Such an appraisal must be to some extent a history of ideas – of the changes from man the hunter for the pot, through the periods of man the hunter for fun, to the time of man the hunter for knowledge, the controller for his own continued existence and the conserver for love."

Thus Dr. Darling relates history and Natural History in this most fascinating story of Britain’s wild life. He is a writer who has the power to infect the reader with his own enthusiasm, not the uncritical enthusiasm of the ill-informed but the genuine passion for a subject which recognises the practical problems involved and knows they are worth tackling with courage and imagination.

Dr. Darling describes the great variety of our countryside which is reflected in the richness of our flora and fauna, unrivalled in Europe and – in proportion to our size – perhaps in the world. He writes too of our Naturalists, of Darwin, Wilson, Jeffries, Hudson and Barbellion with that straight insight that which comes, not from mere knowledge of a man’s life and work, but from an instinctive sympathy with his nature and way of life.

The book is magnificently illustrated with the most superb tints and lithographs, 8 plates in colour, 29 in black and white.

The dust jacket is worn and rubbed at the extremes, with a 1cm split at the top front centre. Apart from a match head sized indent to the leading edge of the front cover, the book is in very good condition. The pages are clean and tightly bound, and, in my opinion, the illustrations are very special.