Tolman, T. and Lewington, R.: Butterflies of Europe.

Butterflies of Europe
Tom Tolman & Richard Lewington

Endorsements | Table of Contents

This is the most comprehensive field guide to the butterflies of Europe. The magnificent color illustrations and succinct entries cover all 440 species across, and sometimes beyond, the continent--from Lapland to North Africa, from the British Isles to Portugal to Greece, from the Pyrenees to the Caucasus. Completely up-to-date, the book includes dozens of species absent in earlier guides and covers the Canary Islands, the Azores, Madeira, and the Aegean Islands, home to several butterflies found nowhere else in Europe.

The entries cover taxonomic nomenclature, range, distribution, description, flight period, variation, habitat, life history--including, importantly, larval host plants--and behavior. The 104 color plates feature over 2,000 illustrations, including both genders of each species and lateral views. Distribution maps accompany nearly all entries. In this journey to the haunts of the Old World's most kaleidoscopic creatures we encounter: Swallowtails and Festoons, Orange Tips, Hairstreaks and Blues, Emperors and Tortoiseshells, Fritillaries, Ringlets, Skippers, and many other delicately winged delights.

All who find butterflies beautiful will treasure this authoritative guide. Whether already afield or still at home dreaming of that trip to Europe, they will feel what the great literary lepidopterist, Vladimir Nabokov, did as a schoolboy in Russia, when, as he once recounted, he so yearned to identify one of those "delicate little creatures that cling in the daytime to speckled surfaces, with which their flat wings and turned-up abdomens blend."

Comprehensive field guide to the 440 butterflies found in Europe

Each species fully illustrated with paintings of the male, female, and, where appropriate, all major forms

Over 2,000 color illustrations and more than 400 distribution maps--one for every widespread species

Text covering taxonomic nomenclature, distribution, flight period, variation, habitat, behavior, life cycle, food plants, and conservation

All information researched from original sources

Endorsement:

"This book will serve as the quick identification guide for anyone interested in the butterflies of Britain and Europe. Its user will have the pleasure of bringing into play the color illustrations by Richard Lewington. To say that they are good would be a disservice--the identification plates are without equal in any modern field guide to butterflies."--P. J. de Vries, Director, Center for Biodiversity Studies, Milwaukee Public Museum

Table of Contents:

Personal Tribute to L. G. Higgins and N. D. Riley 6
Preface 7
Acknowledgements 8
Abbreviations 10
Introduction 11
Basic external anatomy 11
Life-cycle 14
Indentification 14
Arrangement of Main Text 15
Description of species
Papilionidae 23
Pieridae 33
Lycaenidae 64
Riodinidae 138
Libytheidae 139
Danaidae 140
Nymphalidae 142
Satyridae 185
Hesperiidae 257
Checklist of Species 281
Glossary 293
Index of English Names 305
Index of Scientific Names 310