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European stag beetles are one of the 750 000 species of insects. Life
has adapted to existence in an extraordinary variety of environments, as
Edward O. Wilson shows in Diversity of Life, published this month in Britain
(Viking, pp 424, £22.50). But he reminds us just how fast species
are disappearing. As Jonathan Beard wrote (Review, 14 November 1992), ‘this
is not merely another book bemoaning the loss of tropical forests, butterflies
and whales, it is also a biological history of Earth, a defence of Darwinism
and an exposition of evolutionary theory’. Wilson urges an ‘environmental
ethic’ in which humans recognise they are inextricably tied to their fellow
species.