Articles
Book Reviews
Published book reviews (in amateur herpetological society newsletters so far).
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- St. John’s Reptiles of the Northwest
Ark’Type, Aug.-Sept.-Oct. 2003
Regional field guides generally beat the Audubon or Peterson guides hands-down when it comes to descriptions of local ranges, subspecies, and habitat. Some guides provide only limited information in the interest of keeping their size down, sacrificing their usefulness as a reference for their pocketability (e.g. MacCullough’s ROM Field Guide to Amphibians and Reptiles of Ontario). Other guides provide authoritative information in rich, comprehensive quantities, but in a thick book that is kind of hard to carry with you — they’re more textbooks than field guides (e.g. Harding’s Amphibians and Reptiles of the Great Lakes Region or Werler and Dixon’s Texas Snakes). Both methods produce good field guides; it’s just a matter of which kind of guide you need: pocketable or definitive.Alan St. John’s very fine Reptiles of the Northwest manages to maintain its pocketability (and therefore its usefulness in the field) without sacrificing as much, in terms of information, as other guides. It does skimp a bit on information about the animals themselves; facts about their diet, reproduction and behaviour are condensed into a paragraph each. But this is by no means a meagre book. Instead, it is a field guide worthy of the name that focuses on where and how to find reptiles in northwestern North America and how to identify them. It provides very good subspecies data — a rare thing nowadays, when it’s fashionable to deprecate subspecies in favour of elevating them to full species or writing them off as undiagnosable variants. For example, since I breed the rascals, I was glad to learn how to determine the different subspecies of Gopher Snake (Pituophis catenifer). And, in addition to excellent, full-colour range maps, there is photography so beautifully staged and lit that you want to buy them as prints and frame them — including such gems as photos of tiny baby horned lizards (Phrynosoma) and of a Red-spotted Garter Snake (Thamnophis sirtalis concinnus) swallowing a very toxic Rough-skinned Newt (Taricha granulosa).
Most of all, I enjoyed the field notes at the end of each species description, in which St. John tells a personal story about finding the animal in question in the wild (often for the purpose of photographing it for this book). These entertaining tales make Reptiles of the Northwest one of the most unique field guides I have encountered in years, and reminds us that a field guide is really about searching for, encountering and interacting with animals in the field — and this point is ably illustrated by the often-funny photos of snakes dangling off someone’s ear or lizards biting someone’s hand. Highly recommended.
- The ROM Field Guide to Amphibians and Reptiles of Ontario
The OHS News 92 (July 2002)
The ROM Field Guide to Amphibians and Reptiles of Ontario
by Ross D. MacCullough
McClelland & Stewart, 2002. Softcover, 168 pp. ISBN 0-7710-7651-7
Ontarians have not had a field guide to their reptiles and amphibians for some time, at least not since Bob Johnson’s Familiar Reptiles and Amphibians of Ontario (1989). Whereas Johnson’s little book was illustrated with black-and-white sketches that may or may not have resembled the actual animal in question, this new pocket guide is a showcase for excellent herp photography, giving each species native to Ontario three full-colour photographs on the facing page of each written description.It’s important to remember that this is a field guide, focused on the identification of wildlife in the field, and as such is not terribly in-depth — after all, it’s supposed to fit in your pocket! Each species is limited to a page of description and a page of photographs, a format which, for the most part, works rather well. Information is basic (identification, habitat, diet, reproduction), concise and, for the most part, accurate.
But brevity can be risky, and errors can sometimes creep in. Describing Butler’s Garter Snakes as “more slender” than Common Garter Snakes (p. 130) is, in my experience, a mistake; and the description of the Fowler’s Toad’s call as simply “shorter” than that of the American Toad (p. 68) is not correct either. Nor is there any distinction between the Eastern and Red-sided subspecies of the Common Garter; descriptions are at the species level, and different subspecies are not always distinguished.
- Werler and Dixon’s Texas Snakes
The OHS News 87 (Dec. 2000)
Texas Snakes: Identification, Distribution and Natural History
by John E. Werler and James R. Dixon
University of Texas Press, 2000. Hardcover, xv + 437 pp. + plates.
ISBN 0-292-79130-5
Work began on this book twenty years ago, the authors inform us in the preface. Even taking into account the fact that for most of that period, the authors had other responsibilities and could not have worked full-time on this project, that seems an awfully long time to spend on a single work. Looking at the book, though, it is easy to see why. It has all the usual sections you would expect from such a guide: a general introduction, an identification key, a note on venom, an extensive bibliography and, of course, species and subspecies accounts. But those accounts have a level of detail and thoroughness that are unmatched by any other guide, including Tennant’s Field Guide to Texas Snakes, and each gives an in-depth survey of the scientific knowledge of the snake in question. With so much attention paid to each of Texas’s 109 species and subspecies, no wonder it took so long.The range maps, which astonishingly were not generated by computer, are extraordinarily detailed and precise. Instead of just a shaded area covering a snake’s general range, dots show precisely where specimens of a given snake were found, and the maps are large enough and detailed enough to show rivers and county boundaries. In southwest Texas, interestingly, the dots are frequently densely packed along lines — presumably the highways along which the specimens were collected! One point of confusion is that the shaded areas around the dots indicate the subspecies, while the dots themselves indicate the species. Thus, for example, the dots on the maps for the Speckled Kingsnake (Lampropeltis getula holbrooki) and the Desert Kingsnake (L. g. splendida) are identical, except that the shading for each indicates which dots belong to which subspecies. A related wrinkle is that, unlike the Gulf field guides, zones of integradation are not shown: a locality belongs to one subspecies or the other, with no room for ambiguity.
Then there are the illustrations — 208 colour photographs, most of which are large and many of which are breathtaking, and dozens of line illustrations. No skimping here.
Taxonomy is always a sure point of contention. Nitpickers will certainly find enough reason to complain, since this book does not always follow the standard common and scientific names established by Collins. The authors do not necessarily follow the logic that allopatric populations are distinct species, and make calls on a case by case basis. Whatever they’re called, the snakes remain the snakes, and it should make no difference to the usefulness of this book.
Texas Snakes is the best guide to North American snakes that I have yet seen, and though its sheer bulk makes it of limited use as a field guide, it is strongly recommended for anyone with an interest in the snakes in question.
- Holman’s Fossil Snakes of North America
The OHS News 87 (Dec. 2000)
Fossil Snakes of North America: Origin, Evolution, Distribution, Paleoecology
by J. Alan Holman
Indiana University Press, 2000. Hardcover, xi + 357 pp. ISBN 0-253-33721-6
The study of fossil snakes is not nearly as accessible as you might expect. It’s highly specialized work that doesn’t excite the popular imagination nearly as much as a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton. The following quotation from Fossil Snakes of North America is instructive:Fossil snakes usually occur in the form of disarticulated bones, mainly vertebrae and ribs, with a few cranial bones turning up now and then. Rarely, fossil snakes occur as essentially complete skeletons. The problem is that these specimens are usually at least partially embedded in hard rock, which obscures the important diagnostic characters of the individual bones. For this reason, most paleontologists who study snakes would rather have a perfectly preserved middle trunk vertebra than a complete skeleton embedded in rock. (p. 9)
Analyzing the characteristics of tiny snake vertebrae — now really, where’s the fun in that? Unfortunately it will be hard for popular interests in snakes and paleontology to converge: snakes are essentially delicate creatures that don’t fossilize well. Also, we like their pretty colours, which don’t fossilize at all.
All of which is not to fault this book, but it is cold water in the face for those anticipating something more, well, dinosaurish. This is a very dry and technical read: very thorough, lots and lots of detail, easily the reference on the subject, but there’s not much of a narrative to speak of. It does have quite a bit of interesting material. Almost all the North American snake fossils are from the Cenozoic era, and most are from the Pleistocene epoch. While some of the fossils are from extinct snake families, genera, or species, many are from modern taxa — sometimes in locations you wouldn’t expect. Fox snakes in Idaho! They were much more widespread once, but then, they would have had to have been, since their current range was once under a glacier.
You will learn more about the subtle differences in snake vertebrae than you probably ever wanted by reading this book. The shape of a snake’s vertebrae is diagnostic; hardly any other characteristics can be used by the paleontologist. This means that sometimes a fossil can only be tentatively assigned to a genus. It also means a somewhat different species concept.
Unless you’re extremely interested in the subject, this book is best left to specialists.
- Two New Corn Snake Manuals
The OHS News 85 (Spring 2000)
The Corn Snake Manual
by Bill Love and Kathy Love
Advanced Vivarium Systems, 2000. Paperback, 128 pp. ISBN 1-88277054-4
Corn Snakes
by R. D. Bartlett and Patricia Bartlett
Barron’s, 1999. Paperback, 48 pp. ISBN 0-7641-1120-5Corn snakes, for snakes that are comparatively easy to keep — corn snakes are to herpetoculture what boiling water is to cooking: screw that up and you probably shouldn’t try anything else — are a lot more complicated than they used to be. In 1991, Michael J. McEachern’s Color Guide to Corn Snakes described a handful of single- and double-recessive mutations and a couple of distinctive locality morphs. Now there are more morphs than I myself can keep track of, and it’s kind of hard to figure out what they all are.
Fortunately, we now have, after some delay, The Corn Snake Manual, by Bill and Kathy Love. Intended as a successor to McEachern’s Color Guide and Keeping and Breeding Corn Snakes, the Loves’ book is easily the best and most comprehensive care guide on the shelves (though the two by McEachern are still worth getting if you can still find them.) Each section covers its subject with an amazing thoroughness: a lengthy treatise on brumation; a thoughtful couple of pages on stress; even a serious investigation of commercial snake sausages (ick!) under feeding. That thoroughness also carries over to the lavishly illustrated section covering colour and pattern morphs: we not only get a picture and a brief description, but also the history of how that given morph came about (and by whom). So now I discover that a pewter is a combination of bloodred and charcoal (anerythristic B), that butter is an amelanistic caramel, that a milk snake phase is a selectively bred Miami phase … With so much useful and interesting information in this book, every hobbyist with corn snakes simply has to have it.
But for someone just starting out, particularly if he or she is younger, I might suggest that he or she start with the Bartletts’ (them again!) short book, Corn Snakes. It’s short and to the point, covers all the necessary information in only 48 pages, and is well and clearly laid out. For beginners, The Corn Snake Manual might be like an oversize mouse to a young corn snake — nutritious, eagerly attacked, but a bit too much to digest all at once.
- Tennant and Bartlett’s Snakes of North America
The OHS News 84 (Winter 2000)
Snakes of North America: Eastern and Central Regions
by Alan Tennant and R. D. Bartlett
Gulf, 2000. Paperback, xxv + 588 pp. ISBN 0-87719-307-X
Snakes of North America: Western Region
by R. D. Bartlett and Alan Tennant
Gulf, 2000. Paperback, xvi + 312 pp. ISBN 0-87719-312-6Snake nuts will want to know about these books. If, like me, they are particularly fond of North American snakes, they may already own copies of the three field guides already published by Gulf: A Field Guide to Snakes of Florida and A Field Guide to Texas Snakes (the latter already in its second edition), both by Alan Tennant, and A Field Guide to Snakes of California by Philip Brown. Brown’s guide is not as satisfying as the two by Tennant, which provide a heady amount of information on each subspecies, more than could be found in any other field guide. And while Texas and Florida have a lot of snakes between the two of them, I couldn’t help but want even more — information on the snakes that didn’t live in either state.
Now, in two new volumes, one of which is over 600 pages, those wants have been fulfilled. Snakes of North America, in particular the volume on eastern and central regions, takes many of its species accounts more or less directly from the books on Texas and Florida, and the overlap can be considerable. The volume on the western region, on which collaborator Dick Bartlett is the lead author, is considerably slimmer. Not having Tennant’s detailed subspecies accounts from his previous books to draw upon, the western volume covers snakes on a species-by-species (rather than subspecies-by-subspecies) basis, leaving most subspecies with a paragraph of description at most. Are western subspecies less well-defined than eastern subspecies? Less detailed and slimmer, the western volume is more spartan: it lacks the eastern volume’s bibliography and glossary, too.
Some tradeoffs have to be made when moving to the continental scale. Chapters on habitat and identification keys would be too unwieldy in this context, and the maps suffer a similar loss of detail and precision. The maps are particularly problematic in the eastern and central volume for Canadian readers, as they quite often do not include Canada at all (though their Canadian range is discussed in the text). On the western side, the maps show all races of a given species at once, which makes them more difficult to decipher. On the plus side, the photographs of every single North American subspecies (some of which have several photos) are stunning, and represent a visual resource impossible to find anywhere else.
The attraction of having a complete reference on the snakes of North America cannot be understated. Even if you’ve already shelled out for the previous guides, I very much doubt that snake nuts will be able to resist. Curse these insidious Gulf people.
- Mattison’s Keeping and Breeding Snakes
The OHS News 83 (Fall 1999)
The first edition of Chris Mattison’s Keeping and Breeding Snakes appeared in 1988. This second, “fully revised” edition is no mere updating of an earlier work; it is essentially an entirely new book. Its emphases have changed and its text — especially its species accounts — has been rewritten. Gone are the tables with breeding information, and the section on keeping venomous snakes has been reduced to almost an afterthought. The new photographs are nothing less than spectacular, in far more vivid colour than in previous Blandford offerings. In all, the package is quite attractive.Mattison’s coverage of boas and pythons is very comprehensive, even listing taxa not normally available to the hobby. The exception is his coverage of sand boas, limited to a single species. His coverage of colubrids, in one long chapter, is more uneven, emphasizing the more commonly kept varieties. Rat snake enthusiasts will be very happy with his comprehensive coverage of the genus Elaphe and its allies. The book’s coverage of kingsnakes is less detailed; and only a few, larger subspecies of milk snake are covered, the smaller, “bootlace-sized” subspecies being dismissed as “a waste of time”. Other colubrids get even shorter shrift — a surprising omission is the rough green snake — and several other infrequently kept colubrids present in the first edition have been removed altogether, a decision perhaps understandable if the book is intended for an audience of adult beginners. Still, I wonder why a section on the care of snakes from small families (Typhlopidae, Loxocemidae, Xenopeltidae, Tropidopheidae) was included; surely even glossy snakes (omitted) are more commonly kept than blind snakes (included)! Troubling, too, is the decision to cover only western hognoses, which can feed on mice, without referring to eastern and southern hognoses, which won’t. Mattison makes no mention of the genus’s general toad-feeding preferences, and the omission may confuse a beginner.
Nevertheless, this book is tremendously useful. The section on general husbandry is thorough and, generally speaking, leaves very little unsaid. In tone and style the book is more appropriate for adult beginners than for children, but even experienced keepers will find Mattison’s refreshing perspective of value. It’s worth having, even if you own the previous edition.
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You may also want to check out the book reviews on my blog, the book reviews on The Map Room, and entries about books on my old personal blog (some of which are reviews).