the criticisms that have been levelled at his own ideas as formulated in his previous works 

 in English (particularly by Apter and Wolpert, who have questioned whether information 

 theory is at all relevant to development). 



The last two chapters are mainly philosophical in character and discuss the various con- 

 cepts of finality, starting with Aristotle and Kant. Much stress is placed on the complementarity 

 of causal, historical, and final descriptions or explanations of natural phenomena. 



In the reviewer's opinion this is an important book that would merit translation into 

 English. 



Invertebrate Development (general) (see also 54, 55, 64, 70, 84) 



Treatises 



10 



INVERTEBRATE EMBRYOLOGY, translated from the Japanese by J. C. Dan. 1968. Edited by 



M. KUM£ and K. DAN 



Nolit Publishing House, Belgrade. 621 pp., 385 figs., 16 tabs., author, taxonomic, and subject 



indexes. $ 6.00 



Authors: Dan, Hirai, Inaba, Ishikawa, Iwata, Kato, Kume, Kuwana, Oda, Katsuhiro Okada, 

 Kiichiro Okada, Sekiguchi, Shiino, Tadano, Takami, Uchida, Wada, Yamada 



Complete systematic accounts of invertebrate embryology are very rare, and the most 

 recent one is more than thirty years old (Korschelt and Heider, 1936). Therefore this book 

 will be very welcome. It is the translation of a collaborative treatise written by 18 Japanese 

 embryologists and first published in Japanese in 1957. Understandably, no attempt has been 

 made to update the book, the translation being a major achievement in itself. No one could 

 be better qualified to undertake this work than Dr. Jean Clark Dan, the wife of the second 

 editor. The translation was made on behalf of the U.S. National Library of Medicine and 

 the U.S. National Science Foundation. 



It is impossible to review the book in detail here. This will be the task of specialists in the 

 field. We confine ourselves to a few general remarks. The contents are arranged in strict 

 taxonomic order, with the exception of Chapter 1 (by the editors, 70 pp.), which is a general 

 and comparative review of gametogenesis, fertilization, cleavage, germ layer formation, egg 

 organization, and the role of chromosomes in development. This chapter also contains a 

 section on methods for the collection of eggs and sperm in the laboratory. 



The mode of subdivision of the systematic chapters (11 in all) is rather variable, but all 

 chapters treat not only the early stages but also the larval stages and metamorphosis, if any, 

 in the group concerned. 



Throughout the book some of the main experimental-morphological and physiological data 

 are discussed along with the descriptive data. The emphasis in this treatment is on "classical", 

 relatively old data, and of course no data more recent than about 1955 are included. Still it 

 is of great value, particularly to beginning students, that one thus gets a general impression 

 of the sort of problems and experimental approaches peculiar to experimental and physiolo- 

 gical embryology. However, the book is hardly suitable as a work of reference for this part 

 of the subjects. 



All chapters have extensive bibliographies containing titles in all languages. Naturally many 

 papers cited are by Japanese workers, but this is only an advantage, since one gets at least 

 an idea of this work, which was often published in Japanese and therefore is not easily 

 accessible. 



The work is profusely illustrated, mainly with good line drawings. The quality of paper and 

 print is reasonable, but the cover, though sturdy enough, is extremely ugly. This is com- 

 pensated, however, by the very low price. 



328 



