EDITORS PREFACE 



restrict the subject in this way forces a selection from a plethora of 

 examples (of which many are of the same kind) : but it does not result 

 in the loss or omission of any important general conclusions. 



This is the first book devoted entirely to the various groups of 

 parasites which live in or on birds. It describes not only the mutual 

 impact of parasite and host, but the extraordinary modifications of 

 the parasites' sexual habits, life-cycles and anatomy which are associ- 

 ated with their loss of independence. The authors also touch upon 

 other curious relationships — between birds and Hymenoptera (wasps 

 and ants), birds and whales, birds and cattle, birds and cuckoos, 

 birds' nests and insects and mites. 



Miriam Rothschild is a member of the famous family of mer- 

 chant bankers, and a sister of the present Lord Rothschild, who is 

 also a prominent zoologist. Like her late father, the Hon. N. Charles 

 Rothschild, she has always regarded parasitology as an hobby, but 

 has approached it scientifically. Since taking her zoological 

 training at London University she has carried out much experimental 

 work at the Marine Biological Station at Plymouth. Of about sixty 

 scientific papers that she has published, at least forty deal with para- 

 sites. She is probably the world's greatest authority on bird-fleas. 



Theresa Clay, for her part, is probably the world's greatest auth- 

 ority on bird-lice and has published over forty scientific papers on 

 the subject. She has travelled widely accompanying scientific ex- 

 peditions to Africa, Arabia, Pakistan, North America, Iceland, and 

 the European Arctic. Like Miriam Rothschild, she is a trained zoologist 

 — a graduate of Edinburgh University ; and is now a member of the 

 stafif of the British Museum (Natural History). 



Fleas J Flukes and Cuckoos points to many interesting fields for research. 

 All New Naturalist books tend to synthesise our knowledge of a 

 subject, to demonstrate deficiencies in that knowledge, and to 

 point to new goals. In this book the unsolved problems advertised, and 

 the new avenues charted but unexplored, seem to us to be more 

 numerous than in any other that we have so far had the pleasure 

 of editing. There is not even one worker in Britain who is 

 wholly occupied with that extraordinary group of animals, the 

 trematodes or flukes. If this lucid, informative and interesting book, 

 so unusually illustrated, does not stimulate a new surge of research 

 it will be no fault of the authors, and no credit to British 

 naturalists. The Editors 



