How to Know the Insects

I've gotten interested in insects just because of my own curiosity but wanted to learn a bit about their Families and species so I picked up this book (recommended by a teacher of a naturalist class on insects). It is an incredibly complete book with excellent drawings, discussions of common species, easyu to understand layout of orders and families without getting tooooo technical. Just what I needed to get my feet wet in being able to id and learn about specific insects I come across in the garden and elsewhere.

I have owned a copy of this book for many years and consider it to be the best classification guide available for undergraduates and serious amatuer collectors. An index\glossary provides hundreds of terms related to external morphology that can be memorized and the identification procedure is both simple and efficient. There are plenty of detailed illustrations. The only downside is that this book has not been revised in many years. It most likely contains errors, because systematics is an ever-changing field. Most of it is accurate, however, and any serious insect collector can compensate for the outdated information by visiting a public library or museum. This book is probably out of print. Get it now!

I bought this book for my summer Etomology class. It is a very helpful book when you are trying to identify insects, however some of the insect characteristics are hard to see in the diagrams compaired to the real insect. A disecting microscope is strongly recommended when useing this book, since most of the characteristics deal with segments on the legs or antennae, as well as wing veins. These structures hare very hard to see with the naked eye. If a mistake is made in classification it is easy to back track and find your mistake, becuase each step has the number of the previous step. This book also gives you a good description of the insect's charachteristics, habitat, and other usefull information to verify the insect being classified. With this book I was able to classify all of my insects for my collection. I did need some help from the professor and the proctor, however most was just to double check myself. I also used the Peterson's Insect Guide to double check my classification. If you are looking for a book to identify insects for a collection, I strongly recommend this one. However, if you need a book for quick identification in the feild, this isn't the best book for that purpose. For feild purposes use a insect feild guide.