IT IS NOW over 30 years since Dr Matthews wrote his British Mammals, which was No. 21 in the New Naturalist series. The Editors then described it as ‘the most important book on British mammals that has ever been published, bringing together as it does an enormous number of facts into a new synthesis’. The reviewers and our public fully endorsed this opinion, and the book has been a continuing success ever since it was published. It is still the most useful volume in its field, and owners of copies will treasure them on their shelves, and make use of them in their studies, for many years to come.

British Mammals, when it was published, was topical and very up to date, bringing together the results of Dr Matthews’ own observations and the research of many other mammalogists. Since then the subject has made great progress, often stimulated by Dr Matthews’ own writings. As a result there was need for considerable addition to the original text, even though there was little that newer investigations had shown to require correction. British Mammals was already a long book, though every word of its text was interesting and worth reading. Further extensions and revisions would have produced a volume which, in today’s circumstances, would have been so expensive as to have been out of reach of many of those for whom it was intended – ‘the general reader interested in wildlife’.

It was for this reason that we persuaded Dr Matthews to produce an entirely new book. It is in no way a revision of the 1952 publication. Although considerably shorter than its predecessor, it covers all facets of the life of the mammals of the British Isles. Like others in this series, it is not a text book. Several admirable volumes of this nature are now available; this has made it possible to reduce the description of the species to a minimum. Once more the author has produced a synthesis of modern knowledge, which treats mammals as living creatures, living in and adapted to their environment. We are confident that it will meet a real need of today’s readers, and that it is a worthy successor to the author’s previous volume.

AUTHOR’S PREFACE

THIRTY years have passed since my volume ‘British Mammals’ was published as No. 21 in the New Naturalist series, and a large amount of new information has come to hand during that time. The cost of resetting a fully revised new edition was too expensive for the publishers to face; I had therefore to insist that it should be allowed to go out of print – I could not let readers be fobbed off with so out-of-date a book. Paradoxically, the publishers then asked me to write a new and different book on our mammals, and here it is.

I have tried to give a general picture of the British mammals and the things influencing their numbers and distribution both now and in the past, together with the history and development of their environment. I then examine various aspects of their biology, dealing with them as living animals in the field rather than as captives in the laboratory or preserved specimens in museums. I have avoided elaborating technical points of anatomical structure unless they are relevant to matters of function and physiology. In a land so densely populated as the British Isles the paths of animal and man inevitably cross at many places, so I conclude with an account of such relationships and a consideration of the measures man has taken for the control and conservation of his fellow mammals.

The growth in knowledge of the British mammals that has occurred since the publication of the previous book is due to the greatly increased number of people taking an active interest in the subject. Most of them are members of the Mammal Society which in bringing them together to present and discuss the results of their researches at its annual conferences and other meetings has greatly stimulated an interest in the scientific study of mammals. Membership is open to anyone interested; its address is Harvest House, 62 London Road, Reading, Berkshire RG1 5AS.

LHM

CHAPTER 1

THE MAMMALS OF THE BRITISH ISLES

THE number of different kinds of mammal indigenous to the British Isles, and now living in them, is comparatively СКАЧАТЬ

Collins New Naturalist Library. L. Matthews Harrison Чтение книги онлайн.

Читать онлайн книгу Collins New Naturalist Library - L. Matthews Harrison страница 2

Collins New Naturalist Library. L. Matthews Harrison
Чтение книги онлайн.