Soviet smorgasbord

This voluminous volume (1,092 pages) is titled “Keys to the Insects of the European Part of the USSR. Vol IV. Lepidoptera. Part II”. Originally a Russian-language work published in the Soviet Union, it was translated to English by a Dutch publisher, E J Brill, in 1989 and printed by Oxonian Press in India. We are sternly warned that all “export” of the book from India is unauthorized, whatever that means. I can't board an airplane to Amsterdam if I buy one at Osho's ashram in Poona in perfect used condition?

The volume covers 33 families of moths of the Frenatae regarded as “lower” by the editor, whatever *that* means in Darwinian terms. The book covers clothes moths and other pests of stored goods. Clearly, these dishonored butterflies are perfectly adapted to their chosen environments! Since this is a scientific reference work, there are few illustrations, and those that have been included show diagnostic characters, including “types of damage”, i.e. what kind of mines the larvae of moths do inside leafs! A long list of moth-attracting food plants includes pretty much everything from apricot and arctic birch to wormwood and yellow toadflax. “Lower” moths, indeed. If you ask me, I'd say the Euro-SSSR is a gigantic smorgasbord!

Not for the general reader, but for specialists in the lower rungs of the Great Chain of Mothly Being, probably a must.