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CHOICE Review

This extraordinary compendium is really more encyclopedia than dictionary and is a lineal descendant of two previous, venerable dictionaries: A Dictionary of Birds by Alfred Newton (London, A. and C. Black, 1893-96) and A New Dictionary of Birds, ed. by A.L. Thomson (1964). It should remain a valuable reference work for decades. The product of a massive cooperative effort, this book contains hundreds of signed contributions by more than 280 ranking authorities with lengthy entries on most of the general topics. Since the work was published under the auspices of the British Ornithologists' Union, it naturally has a British/European bias but, since the phenomena discussed are of international relevance, this bias is not very limiting. However, the book does skimp on the important fieldwork going on in North America, e.g., Christmas bird counts, the Breeding Bird Survey, and the atlas movement. Nicely covered are biological subjects, bird families, anatomy, and physiology, as well as broad subjects such as behavior, migration and plumage. Biographical information lies outside the dictionary's scope and was not a feature of its predecessors either. No other current dictionary comes close to its quality and comprehensiveness except for John K. Terres's excellent The Audubon Society Encyclopedia of North American Birds (CH, Apr '81), which is equally massive, more fully illustrated, and more popularly oriented than the academic Campbell dictionary. The format is good and the illustrative material is excellent and always germane. Highly recommended for college, university and public libraries.-H.T. Armistead, Thomas Jefferson University