Verna R. Johnston, who taught biology at San Joaquin Delta College for thirty-seven years, is a natural-history writer and photographer. A Japanese edition of her most recent book, California Forests and Woodlands (California, 1994), has just been published. Her photography has appeared in numerous exhibitions, and more than 100 of her articles have been printed in Audubon, the Christian Science Monitor, Encyclopedia Britannica, the New York Times, and other publications.