ED I TO R S' PREFACE 



An object of the New Naturalist series is the recognition of the many- 

 sidedness of British natural history, and the encouragement of unusual 

 and original developments of its forgotten or neglected facets. One 

 such facet is the study of parasites, a study all too long regarded as 

 curiosity about mere curiousness, or as excursions into backwaters. 

 Some popular books that have been written on the subject have 

 stressed the unusual, the mysterious, often the macabre. Few have 

 taken the subject truly seriously. This book, which is at the same time 

 an able (and entertainingly written) popular exposition, and an original 

 and new scientific synthesis, will put things in a new and true 

 perspective. 



"Birds," the authors quote from A. E. Shipley, "are not only birds 

 but aviating zoological gardens." This book is the first guide to those 

 gardens: it is the study of a community of animals, plants and bacteria 

 that is just as real, as any of the communities of the wood, the stream, 

 the field, or the sea. For the outside and inside of the body of a bird 

 (or for that matter, any other vertebrate animal) harbours, and 

 shelters a vast population of organisms, of many species, whose way of 

 life, relationships and importance are little-known and poorly under- 

 stood. 



Birds are the most intensively-studied animals in the world- 

 yet only a few naturalists consider the existence of the birds' relation- 

 ships with the vast network of organisms that comprises their parasite- 

 community. Only a mere handful is interested in the subject. But 

 because birds are otherwise so well-studied, they make the best 

 starting-point for a development of the picture of parasites alive and 

 at work. It was fortunate for the New Naturalist that this view had 

 been held for many years by the two able workers whose researches 

 and wide scholarship have here borne fruit. 



This book, then, leads the reader to the lessons to be learned 

 from the life of parasites, via the particular parasites of birds. To 



ix 



