Ever since acquiring a new microscope, I have been spending quite a lot of time renewing old acquaintances with some once familiar microscopic flora and fauna. Needless to say, despite my best efforts and plenty of dipping into assorted local ponds for specimens, blowing the dust off my identification skills has been progressing somewhat less quickly than I’d hoped.

However much to my great delight, a recent addition to the Pelagic Publishing Naturalists’ Handbooks series, Brian Moss’ Ponds and Small Lakes; Microorganisms and Freshwater Ecology (Naturalists’ Handbooks 32), recently found its way to my desk, making the time I now spend with my microscope much more productive and my understanding of what I’m seeing more meaningfully enriched indeed.