Thanks for the replies, everyone. I got a surprising number of private replies
too - maybe people don't like to admit they're been birding for that long?
It seems that it was the predecessor or the current Slater. Fairly obvious, I
suppose, but I was intrigued to come across the reference to a two volume set,
as I'd never heard of it. I assume he did it in two volumes so that he could
get something onto the market before completing the second half (they were
about 5 years apart).
That I had never heard of this set is no surprise. I had no idea there was
anything other than the "What Bird Is That?" that I found on the classroom
bookshelf in grade 5 until I came across a remaindered harcover copy of Simpson
and Day about 20 years ago, and bought it on a whim. It was to sit unopened
until about 5 years ago, when I quickly realised how impractical a book that
size is.
The explanation I was given for the extra pages in the original Slater was that
the current text has a more efficient layout of the pictures, and smaller text
(and maybe less text).
Interesting comments about the positioning of the colour plates in the book.
Moving them to every second page must have been a major improvement, and I note
that HANZAB has them in clusters throughout the book. I assume it's more
expensive to do it any other way, and that's why that kind of arrangement
persisted for so long.
Peter Shute
> -----Original Message-----
> From:
> On Behalf Of
> Elizabeth Shaw
> Sent: Wednesday, 23 February 2011 10:11 AM
> To: Birding Aus
> Subject: [Birding-Aus] Fw: Two volume Slater field guide
>
> Growing up in the sixties "What Bird is that?" by Neville
> Cayley was the
> only bird book available. Our family's copy was a second
> edition, printed
> in 1958 and sold for 40/- (40 shillings, or 2 pounds), which
> would have been
> a lot of money in those days. (I have that copy now.)
> It was organised quite differently to current field guides,
> but for its time
> was quite useful. Illustrations were clustered together on coloured
> 'plates' and sections grouped birds approximately into
> habitats, which can
> be useful to compare all the 'open forest' or 'heath and
> undergrowth' birds
> on one page.
> Drawbacks for me as a child using the book included the lack
> of detail in
> the illustrations and the poor colour reproduction of the plates.
> The Slater and Slater double volume came out in the late
> sixties, I think.
> That had several advantages and taught me the differences
> between passerines
> and non-passerines. They were smaller than Cayley, but
> illustrations were
> still grouped together rather than side-by-side with the
> descriptions. This
> time all the illustrations were grouped together in a section
> in the middle
> of the text. A couple of good innovations were the (b&w)
> illustrations of
> underwing patterns of birds of prey and the inclusion of
> distribution maps
> for each species. Once again these were grouped in a
> separate section, at
> the back of the book.
> Looking up about a bird involved looking at the illustrations in one
> section, reading the descriptions - and these were particularly good,
> especially behaviour, then checking the maps to see if the
> bird you had
> decided on was likely to be in the area you saw it in.
> Later my father (Noel Shaw) started working at the Gould
> League of Victoria
> and instigated their publication of the "Birds of Victoria" series of
> guides, also grouped on habitats. Dad became editor.
> These books were smaller and true field guides, in that they
> were small
> enough to carry in a pocket or haversack without weighing you down.
> Sometimes though you'd need to carry two or three with you to
> cover all the
> habitats you would be in for the trip. The illustrations
> were wonderful,
> especially those done by Sue McInnes in the later volumes and
> reprints on
> the earlier three.
> I used these for many years and often had a set in the car to
> refer to until
> quite recently when Morecombe put out a more compact volume
> and the others
> had disintegrated from wear and tear.
> Elizabeth Shaw
> Phillip Island
> Victoria
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