EARTHLY PLEASURES: Tales From a Biologist’s Garden...

EARTHLY PLEASURES: Tales From a Biologist’s Garden (198 pp., illustrated) and FIELD DAYS: Journal of an Itinerant Biologist by Roger B. Swain (217 pp.) (Lyons & Burford: $12.95 each). The host of “The Victory Garden” (PBS) combines scientific knowledge, historical research and an irrepressible love of nature in these engaging essays. He begins a discussion of the pleasures of maple sugaring, “Tree bark, like French, becomes much more relevant when you have an immediate need to understand it. . . . There is nothing more embarrassing than having someone else point out that you have tapped an elm.” Swain takes the reader on a genial ramble over his small New Hampshire farm, explaining how to grow and preserve cabbage, the origins of mulberry trees and why New England soil produces a fresh crop of rocks every spring.