justification of the choice of papers is given in the brief 

 anonymous volume prefaces. This makes it difficult for the re- 

 viewer to judge whether the choice is authoritative in areas 

 with which he is not familiar. In those areas where he feels 

 more competent to judge he often found it difficult to agree 

 with the inclusion of certain papers and the omission of others. 

 However, this holds for almost all selections of this kind. 



A remark that holds for the series as a whole is that some 

 areas are covered much more extensively than others. In some 

 areas, but not in all, there seems to be some bias towards 

 American publications, which may be due in part to the under- 

 standable restriction to papers written in English. The books 

 could be useful in graduate courses, but in any particular case 

 this strongly depends on whether one agrees with the selection 

 and extent of coverage. Many teachers may prefer to make their 

 own selections. 



Most papers are from well-known and easily accessible jour- 

 nals. The papers are reprinted in fascimile, but for some rea- 

 son abstracts and summaries have usually been removed, as well 

 as authors' addresses. The text is on the whole clearly printed, 

 but the photographic illustrations have suffered from reproduc- 

 tion to varying degrees, sometimes to the extent of losing most 

 of their information content. Each volume has indexes to authors 

 and title key-words of the papers included. The tables of con- 

 tents and the credits and acknowledgements show signs of hasty 

 composition and careless proof-reading. 



The books are sturdily bound, but the price per volume is too 

 high for the value one gets. The use of the name of the first 

 author of the first paper on the back, where the editor's name 

 should be, is highly misleading. One of the volumes at our dis- 

 posal contains 16 wrong pages (see review no. 45). 



Reference works 



140. 



Ph.L.ALTMAN and D.S.DITTMER, eds . 1972. BIOLOGY DATA BOOK, 

 2nd edit. Vol.1 



Fed. of Am. Societies for Exper .Biology , Bethesda. XX,606 pp., 

 numerous tabs., combined subject and taxonomic index. $ 30.00 

 per volume or $ 75.00 for the three-volume set 



Contents: I. Genetics and cytology; II. Reproduction; 

 III. Development and growth; IV. Properties of biological 

 substances; V. Materials and methods; Appendix I-IX 



The second edition of this book, which was first published in 

 1964, has been greatly expanded, and now appears in three vol- 

 umes totalling more than 1,600 pages (as against 633 for the 

 first edition). The expansion has resulted in part from the in- 

 clusion of material from the specialized handbooks previously 

 published in the same series. In addition many more species 

 were covered. 



Vol.1 is based on contributions made by 245 research scien- 

 tists in the capacity of primary contributors or reviewers. 

 Part III, which is of most immediate interest to our readers, 

 was expanded from 40 to 74 pages. Among the new sections are: 

 time variations in developmental stages of mammals and birds; 

 equivalent numerical designations for stageing systems in am- 

 phibians and fishes; normal stages for Ambystoma maculatum; 

 liver regeneration in the rat; limb regeneration in newts. 

 Human postnatal growth data are now in a separate chapter. Nor- 

 mal stages for the mouse and for Xenopus laevis are lacking; 



243 



