This book, even more than most, should be judged on two separate criteria: first, what is in it, as a contribution to knowledge in general, and second, what is its effect on its intended audience. It succeeds brilliantly in both respects.
What is in it? It is a field guide, with pictures and descriptions of all 50 currently recognized species and subspecies of living Malagasy lemurs. There is also a plate of Stephen Nash's reconstructions of extinct giant lemurs which is rapidly becoming one of the most pirated single book illustrations on the primate lecture-slide circuit. Gorilla-sized, extinct Archeoindris is in the guide, one shambling hand upraised. The smallest of all primates, Microcebus myoxinus, is there as well, even though its description was published only last year [Schmid and Kappeler, 19941. The species and subspecies are succinctly presented, with a paragraph each of identification, geographic range, natural history, and where to see it. Naturally, this is inadequate treatment for any one lemur-it does not satisfy a desire to know every behavioral study of the ringtail, for instance. However, given the expertise of the authors, the facts that are stated are the best we have available, and in the most accessible format. For rare and recently discovered forms such as the golden-crowned sifaka the information is even better than you can find in published literature. The series of variant Variegatus is an object lesson in the difficulty of defining subspecies. Besides, Stephen Nash's drawings are a delight, both the carefully colored diagnostic plates and the action sketches scattered through the text. I am not sure if my favorite is the Eulemur inching its way over a branch gap, or the hairy-eared dwarf lemur yearning upward bipedally, the ultimate essence of cute.
In short, everyone who deals professionally with prosimians needs a Lemur Guide in easy reach of the desk. However, the real audience is not the few dozen specialists. It is every ecotourist in Madagascar. Even more ambitious, the Guide aims to change the nature of primate ecotourism.
Madagascar has just, reluctantly, discovered that ecotourism is its biggest foreign exchange earner, outranking coffee and vanilla and sisal and gems. As the Guide points out, Madagascar ranks 123rd out of 153 countries on the UN Human Development Index, largely because of its material poverty. Foreign exchange is an urgent need. But serious ecotourists come in two varieties. There are people who arrive because the landscape and people are exotic and the lemurs indeed enchanting. Then there are twitchers, with their checklists of birds, orchids, succulent plants, and even fungi. (One enthused to me, "I added a species to my life list right at the airport!") The point about twitchers is that they may even return again, or stay a long time and visit many different sites, bringing a little tourist cash to each province. Many of the general or cute-lemur tourists are ambitious to