Field Days: Journal of an Itinerant Biologist

by Roger B. Swain

Book Overview

From cutting firewood to solving the global wood shortage, Swain never fails to deliver an entertaining and informative look at the natural world. "Swain muses over the familiar, finding in it much that is puzzling and wondrous". -- Washington Post

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 068417989X
• ISBN13: 9780684179896
• Release Date: January 1983
• Publisher: Scribner Book Company
• Length: 217 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.

Customer Reviews

We are stardust, we are golden

Gentle humor and penetrating insight make the wide ranging essays on matters great and small in this slim volume a thoroughgoing delight. Gypsy moths and mulberries, house plants and hamburgers, the joy of maple sugaring, the economics of firewood and the wheat-from-chaff separation of stones from topsoil all blend under 's thoughful treatment. Like Annie Dillard, Loren Eisley or Stephen Jay Gould, this author moves into and through the immediate to take in the world. (He is more plainspoken than Dillard, more modern than Eisley, less pop-cultural than Gould, if that helps you triangulate.)

a delightful romp through a variety of topics, great fun

This delightful book, "Field Days," perfectly fits its title. As author Roger B. Swaim writes in the introduction, field days means not only "the sense of there being explorations and scientific investigations carried on outdoors," but also that it carries connotations of "the sense of unfettered activity, extreme pleasure, delight, and enthusiasm." In this work Swaim explores a number of biology and natural history issues in his native New England - and often of the world at large - ranging with pleasure and enthusiam from one topic to another almost as a butterfly flitting about a sunny meadow. Much in the spirit of his book, I provide a small review sample of some of the chapters of his book."Trackside" explores an unusual topic, railroad flora. He writes that trains are often excellent dispersers of seeds, often resulting in many exotic and unusual plants being found along railroads. From alianthus to onions, sesame to cucumbers, snapdragons to petunias, castor bean from Africa to Dallis grass from South America, pears to apricots, all have been found along railroads, places traditionally thought of of as waste places. Swaim explores how these plants arrive in such an odd location, how they survive, and just marvels at the wonder of it, of how nature always finds a way. "Gypsy Moths" explores one of the most hated denizens of the eastern United States, insect invaders that spread like a plague ever year to the chagrin of local residents, "horrified by the thousands of dark, hairy caterpillars with their blue and red warts, horrified by the incessant leaf chewing, and revolted by the steady drizzle of caterpillar droppings from the branches overhead." Swaim explores the biology of these insects, their history in the United States, their effects on the local ecology, and of humanity's war against them. Even with these much maligned organisms Swaim finds interesting and enlightened things to say."Guests at Work" explores one of those uniquely New England pasttimes; making maple syrup. If you never knew how it was made and wanted to know this chapter is a treat, showing how even small residential plots have yielded rich syrup, from light amber Grade A syrup to molasses-dark Grade C. Showing his enthusiasm for the natural world world knows no bounds, in "The Ungracious Host" Swaim explores a subject I don't see often discussed at least in my readings in popular natural history writings; lice. Exploring their biology, the different types of lice that afflict people, their interaction with humans, and how people combat them, Swaim provided me with information I never knew! There are of course many other subjects discussed in "Field Days," from fungus to growing and harvesting cranberries to evergreens to pollen (and hay fever) to how animals and plants deal with the arrival of spring to issues of lake water quality...so many topics are discussed with humor, authority, and enthusiasm that there is something for everyone.

READABLE & RE-READABLE

Roger Swain not only writes of the garden: how and when to "let nature take its course;" photosynthesis and evergreen leaves; future, scientific uses for cranberry juice beyond asking a bartender for a more sophisticated drink than ginger ale; bee venom as a treatment for arthritis---he also makes all of his extaordinary thoughts interesting and entertaining.This is a book for people who realize that our actions have effects on our world. and, perhaps more importantly, it should be read by those people, including politicians, who do not.Swain is the science editor of "Horticulture" magazine. He writes gracefully (i.e. in his "Fair Days For Vegetables" he tells us that "For many, just the subject of tomatoes is enough to leave a good taste in their mouths.") and his essays can be read and re-read. My personal favorite, which I've read three different times, is about the declining quality of our water: "A Drink You Can Swim In." Swain writes of the popularity of bottled waters and cleverly quotes Samuel Clemens: "To increase something's popularity you have only to increase the price...." RECOMMENDED