The first author of this thorough and comprehensive monograph has been 

 an active investigator in this field for at least ten years. He is one of the 

 world's very few authorities in the field, and has received a distinction from 

 a Dutch medical society for his work. 



The book contains an amazing Vv'ealth of data on the general and compar- 

 ative biology of parturition. The material is arranged logically and clearly, 

 and covers a broad range of aspects: the approach is truly biological. The 

 anatomy, physiology, and ethology of birth are considered exhaustively. The 

 longest chapter, that on the birth process per se (Ch. IV) consists of a general 

 and a special part. In the latter all mammalian orders are considered. It con- 

 tains several extended protocols of birth sequences observed in nature or in 

 captivity. The manuscript of Chapter II was contributed by the second author 

 shortly before his death. 



The book is profusely and beautifully illustrated. Of the many unique photo- 

 graphs a large proportion are original. Each chapter has its own bibliography, 

 and the book is concluded by a detailed subject index. The book is well printed 

 and well produced and the price is reasonable. 



4 TOWARDS A THEORETICAL BIOLOGY 



1. Prolegomena 1968 



2. Sketches 1969 



3. Drafts 1970 



Editor: C. H. Waddington Edinburgh University Press 



1. 234 pp., 22 figs., 2 tbs. Edinburgh 



2. 351 pp., 38 figs., 3 tbs. Aldine Publ. Comp. 



(SBN 85224 045 7) Chicago, 111. 



3. 253 pp.. 41 figs., 2 tbs., 6 pis. Price: 50 s., 80 s., 70 s. 



(SBN 85224 175 5) respectively 



Participants: M. A. Arbib (Stanford, Calif.), E. W. Bastin (Cambridge). D. Bohm (Lon- 

 don), P. Buneman (Edinburgh), J. A. Bums (Edinburgh), A. G. Cairns Smidi (Glasgow), 

 M. Cohen (Chicago. 111.), J. Cowan (Chicago, 111.), S. Devons (New York, N.Y.), W. M. 

 Elsasser (Baltimore, Md.), A. Eraser (Cincinnati, Ohio), M. Garstens (Baltimore, Md.), 

 B. Goodwin (Brighton), R. L. Gregory (Edinburgh), M. Grene (Univ. of Texas), A. S. 

 Iberall (Pennsylvania), S. Kauffman (Chicago, 111.), E. H. Kerner (Univ. of Delaware). 

 K. Kornacker (Cambridge, Mass.), H. Kroeger (Ziirich), S. Langer (Connecticut Coll.), 

 R. Levins (Chicago. 111.). R. C. Lewontin (Chicago, 111.), P. Lieber (Berkeley. Calif.). Ch. 

 Longuet-Higgins (Edinburgh). J. Maynard Smith (Brighton), E. Mayr (Cambridge, Mass.), 

 D. Michie (Edinburgh). R. E. Monro (Cambridge), H. H. Pattee (Stanford, Calif.), J. R. 

 Piatt (Ann Arbor, Mich.), R. Sager (New York, N.Y.), L. E. Scriven (Minneapolis, Minn.), 

 R. Thorn (Bures-sur-Yvette). C. H. Waddington (Edinburgh). L. Wolpert (London), Ch. 

 Zeeman (Warwick) 



These three books are the outcome of three lUBS Symposia held in Bella- 

 gio, Italy in 1966, '67, and '68. They are best reviewed together, because there 

 is a great deal of overlap between them, both in topics and in participants. 

 For this reason a combined list of participants is given above. Most of the 

 participants were biologists, neuroscientists, theoretical chemists and phys- 

 icists, computer scientists, and mathematicians. 



It is not our intention to review the books in detail. The reason why we 

 bring them to the attention of our readers is that developmental biology is 

 one of the cornerstones of contemporary biology, along with cell biology, 

 molecular biology, genetics, and evolutionary biology; this is reflected in the 

 contents of these books. In a large proportion of the contributions problems 

 of differentiation and morphogenesis are discussed explicitly or implicitly. 



We believe that all-round developmental biologists cannot afford to ignore 

 what is going on in the field of theoretical biology to-day. We therefore 

 recommend these books to those who are interested but do not regularly have 



12 



