Volume 37, Number 16 · October 25, 1990
New Bird in Birdland
By George Plimpton
A Parrot Without A Name: The Search for the Last Unknown Birds on Earth
by Don Stap
Knopf, 239 pp., $19.95
The insect people have it best. Hundreds, sometimes thousands of species are discovered and described each year. Some authorities believe that 90 percent of insect species have yet to be identified. One entomologist I talked to, Dr. Terry Erwin at the Smithsonian, whose specialty is a group of ground beetles (genus Agra) that live high in the rainforest canopy of equatorial South America, informed me that over two thousand species of this one highly specialized genus of beetle exist.
Review, 3114 words
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