The New Noah. Vintage

Black and white illustrations throughout. Black and white illustrations throughout with photographic plates to centre of book.
The book is an account for older children of Gerald Durrell various expeditions to collect animals for zoos, to some extent an anthology of the best bits from various previous accounts.
If you want to know how to capture, and then make friends with an ant-eater, an electric eel, or a porcupine or a boa-constrictor, this is your book.
When Gerald Durrell goes wild-animal hunting he takes interest and affection along with his nets and traps. And his captives enjoy luxury treatment as he discovers how to feed and train them and prepare them for display in the zoos to which they are destined.
This is a fascinating book, for the reader is let into many secrets of the animal hunter's trade, as well as being introduced to a variety of charming and curious animals such as capybaras, hoatzins, and tucotucos, not to mention a tame curassow called Cuthbert.
Boa-Constrictors, paradoxical frogs, hoatzins, bush babies and tucotucos - they're all part of what Gerald Durrell casually calls his 'big family'. Each animal in his menagerie exhibits such curious habits and eccentricities. There was Cholmondely the chimpanzee, for example, who was 'king' of the collection, liked a good cigarette and his tea not too hot, but had a horror of snakes! Cuthbert the curassow loved to collapse across people's feet when they weren't looking.