The book begins with introductory chapters on Collecting ("Although killing off bats in small numbers is not likely to affect their population density, one can also collect bat fleas by exposing bats to fumes of chloroform in a tin or jar." How times have changed!), Preserving, Labelling, Mounting, Morphology, Glossary with explanatory line drawings (10.5 pages - parasites have specialised morphology).

The dichotomous keys follow the taxonomic hierarchy (ie they are natural keys) so tend to use obscure hard-to-see characters, rather than obvious characters like number of teeth on the various combs. Also many of the terms are defined in words rather than illustrated (spinelet) or not defined at all (fracticipit, integricipit). All this makes the keys hard to use, however the species are usually quite distinctive (at least the mammal fleas) when you finally get there!

The final entry for each species gives a useful confirmatory description - using the characters I’d have prefered to see in the keys! The species entries have a few lines on biology, host preferences and distribution.

Can be downloaded from the Royal Entomological Society website.