The Butterfly Book

While we wait for the greenhouse lettuce to get big enough to eat, let us dwell on summery topics like butterflies.

Usually I save my book reviews for While Reading to the Dog, but in this case I'll make an exception. I got lucky at a library sale earlier this month and found another vintage copy (1931) of The Butterfly Book: A Popular and Scientific Manual Depicting All the Butterflies of the United States and Canada by W.J. Holland.


Sounds dull doesn't it?

It isn't. This thick, heavy book includes more than 70 full-color plates, with butterflies and their vivid colors exploding out of the pages.

The scientific text includes the names, habitat, natural predators, and line illustrations of the wing profile of each species.

As well as a black and white plate of the very first scientific drawing of an American butterfly from 1887.

Several of the plates include each species' catapillars, in great detail, and on their plant food of choice if it's unique and unusual.

Here and there are tucked butterfly poems and trivia. Did you know the Scots refer to them as flutterby's?

Mostly though, there are just beautiful color illustrations of every conceiveable butterfly, enough to convince you summer is right around the corner.

The Butterfly Book: A Popular and Scientific Manual Depicting All the Butterflies of the United States and Canada by W.J. Holland, Offered for Sale by Chewybooks as of November 20,2009.