Under The Microscope

THE WETA BOOK, by Mike Meads; DSIR Land Resources, 1990; 36 pages; $6.00

The weta is undoubtably one of New Zealand's most repulsive inhabitants. Aimed at amateurs, this book contains step by step guides to identifying just which particular species it is that has taken up residence in your jersey.

Whether you believe in knowing thine enemy or are really interested in the wee beasties, this book is worth looking at. It concentrates on tree, ground and giant wetas, with cave wetas being essentially passed by as "...a group which is very large and complex". Most people probably won't be too inconvenienced by this.

One word of warning -- Meads does expect you to get close enough to your weta to look at some fairly intimate details. Those of us who aren't so keen on that can still get a fairly good idea of what it is by reading through the more general section of descriptions. These include a number of maps indicating species' distribution.

A number of weta species are highly endangered, so perhaps the time is ripe for their fans to come forth and sing their praises. The Weta Book should prove useful to the more intrepid amateur naturalists amongst us, and the descriptions section interesting to everyone.

Phil Anderson