the book readable. It should of course be realized that many of the species treated and 

 sources of living material indicated reflect the situation in the British Isles. 



Most major animal groups are represented: echinoderms, ascidians, molluscs, annelids, 

 nematodes, insects and crustaceans; fish, amphibians, birds and mammals. Particular 

 attention is devoted to early development. The numerous exercises described obviously 

 vary in degree of difficulty and time required. A great deal of the practical information 

 included will be of value to advanced research vi'orkers as well. 



The book is illustrated with for the most part simple line drawings and some useful 

 photographic material. Series of normal stages are included for a killyfish, Xenopus, and 

 the axolotl. The subject index is quite extensive. 



3. 



E. M. DEUCHAR. 1975. CELLULAR INTERACTIONS IN ANIMAL DEVELOPMENT 



Chapman & Hall, London. X, 298 pp., 126 figs., 21 pis., 10 tabs., subject index. £6.50, 



This book is intended for students taking courses which include cell biology or 

 developmental biology. The author is an embryologist and deliberately turns the reader's 

 attention to groups of embryonic cells, whole embryos, and whole tissues rather than to 

 the single cell. As such the book provides a most useful counterbalance to certain trends 

 in the present-day teaching of biology. 



The treatment of the subject matter is of course highly selective, but particularly 

 because of its very readable style and because the main problems and recent advances are 

 well brought out, the book will serve as a stimulating "appetizer" for almost any student 

 of developmental biology. The emphasis is on vertebrate development, but invertebrates 

 are adduced wherever they can clarify particular points. Of particular interest are the 

 penultimate chapter on long-distance cellular interactions mediated by hormones, and the 

 concluding chapter on "protective interactions", which covers such subjects as cell 

 recognition and cloning, the immune system, regeneration and repair, compensatory 

 growth, and the properties and control of tumours. The data are not always rendered 

 with equal clarity and precision (a case in point being the discussion of mesoderm 

 induction in the amphibian blastula), but these are minor blemishes. 



The book is illustrated with simple but very adequate line drawings and a number of 

 good photographic plates. There is a list of over 550 references, most of them recent, 

 which lacks the bias towards Anglo-Saxon literature so often encountered. (It does have 

 rather many mistakes in the spelling of foreign names, however.) 



4. 



P. EMSCHERMANN. 1974. ENTWICKLUNG, Grundlagen - Erkenntnisse der tierischen 



Fortpflanzung und Ontogenie. 2nd edit. 



Herder, Freiburg, etc. Reihe Studio Visuell. 128 pp., numerous figs., combined name and 



subject index. DM 20.00 



This book was first published in 1973. It was written for the educated layman and for 

 secondary school and beginning university students. For the first two categories it is 

 perhaps suitable in Germany but would be too difficult in many other countries. On the 

 other hand, it is very suitable for use by university students, particularly there where 

 developmental biology is being taught against a broad biological background, as in many 

 continental universities. 



The emphasis is more on the morphological and phylogenetic than on the causal 

 aspects of development, although the latter are considered in outline. The style is not 

 exactly simple but always fluent and unambiguous. More than a third of the book is 

 devoted to reproduction, which is seen as a necessary background to the treatment of 

 individual development. Throughout the book examples are taken from a wide variety of 

 animal groups. 



192 



