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One of the great British natural history books, originally published by Frederick Warne in the `Wayside and Woodlands' series, now available again at an affordable price as a Pisces CD-book, and as a facsimile edition in paperback format.

Originally published in 1959, with a total print run of only 400 copies, Southwood and Leston's 'Land and Water Bugs of the British Isles' remains one of the best-known and respected works on the Hemiptera/Heteroptera. It features 32 coloured plates, 31 black and white plates, and 153 text figures.

From the publisher's announcement of the CD-book:

After many years out of print, Southwood and Leston's classic text, 'Land and Water Bugs of the British Isles' has been reissued in electronic form, by Pisces Conservation, working in co-operation with Prof. Sir Richard Southwood.

'Land and Water Bugs' is available on CD-ROM for Windows PCs and Macs. The plates, figures and text are reproduced exactly from the original, with the added bonus of being fully cross-referenced and searchable.

The quality of reproduction of all the illustrations is excellent, allowing accurate and precise identification. The book is in Adobe Acrobat pdf format (with free Reader software supplied on the CD), allowing text and plates to be printed at high resolution.

From a review by Gordon Ramel (see http://www.earthlife.net/insects/pub/pisces.html):

Southwood and Leston's classic text, 'Land and Water Bugs of the British Isles' is a wonderful set of volumes, which I have used (from library copies) to write some of the pages of this site. It is justifiably called a classic, it is comprehensive, well written and excellently illustrated. It also contains a very useful set of identification keys. It has long been a disappointment of mine that I do not own a copy as it has been out of print for some years and has become a collector's item, making it far too expensive for me. I was well pleased then when Pisces Conservation contacted me and offered me a review copy of their recent reissued electronic version. They have produced this working in co-operation with Prof. Sir Richard Southwood, one of the original authors so I did not expect to be disappointed and I wasn't.

While I will admit I would rather have paper than plastic, because you can't take a CD into the mountains with you to read, this PDF copy is excellent, and once you learn your way around the Acrobat software (which comes included) there is nothing further to do than enjoy it. For the modern computer world a CD version of a book like this is an excellent option, particularly for the images, which are reproduced well here. All the various families of Heteroptera that occur in the UK are discussed and illustrated. It is cheap and good value for money, an undoubtedly useful resource for every teacher in the UK who has students looking at the world around them.

Highly Recommended