This book is real old-fashioned natural history, as it was before it became complicated, quantitative, and computerized. Observation of the features and changes of the plants discussed, their relations with their insect visitors, the amazing galls that form on them, their responses to seasonal progressions, all these and many other fascinating and beautiful phenomena are what this book is about. It is not a manual for identification, though the superb drawings will make it easy to recognize quite a few of the wild woody plants encountered in the northeastern United States.