Handbook of Canadian Mammals: 2, Bats

Robert J. Sawyer is a Toronto-based free-lance writer.

Bats is Volume 2 of C.G. van Zyll de Jong’s comprehensive seven-part Handbook of Canadian Mammals. The author is Curator of Mammals at the National Museum of Natural Sciences in Ottawa. The dustjacket (a rare thing on a paperback) reasonably pegs the books for use “as a basic reference by naturalists and students as well as by professional biologists who require an up-to-date reference to the systematics, distribution and natural history of Canadian bats.” A chapter is devoted to each of the 20 species of winged mammals known in Canada, giving Latin names, common English names, and common French names. Body and skull dimensions are detailed, as are ranges. Also included are sections on bat morphology, world distribution, classification, and biology. Bats is profusely illustrated: four plates by distinguished nature artist Paul Geraghty; 51 figures that tell the average reader more about bats than he or she might want to know (the last one depicts the penis of Antrozous pallidus); 20 distribution maps; and four tables. A French-language edition is available. Lay readers will find M. Brock Fenton’s Just Bats (University of Toronto Press, 1983) a more comfortable reference.