papers range from the late fifties or early sixties to the early seventies. The oldest papers 

 are those by Spemann and Mangold ('24), Waddington, Needham and Needham ('33), and 

 DuShane ('35). The last main section has chapters on the genesis of neural connections 

 and on autonomous growth in plants (crown-gall tumour). Most of the research papers are 

 on current animal developing systems, but there are also papers on Lilium (anthers), Blas- 

 tocladiella (spore germination), Dictyostelium (enzyme programmes), and various unicel- 

 lular organisms and bacteriophages (self-assembly). Mammalian embryos are only con- 

 sidered in connection with the clonal origin of melanocytes. 



The book is attractively produced. The editorial sections have their own very good 

 illustrations. 



THEORETICAL AND MATHEMATICAL DEVELOPMENTAL BIOLOGY (see also 20, 



21,107) 



Symposium reports 



S. A. LEVIN, ed. 1974. SOME MATHEMATICAL QUESTIONS IN BIOLOGY. VI 

 Amer. Mathem. Soc, Providence, R. I. Lectures on Mathematics in the Life Sciences, vol. 

 7. VI, 232 pp., 69 figs. 



It is a pity that these volumes are not widely publicised and therefore reach us very 

 late. Much of the material may therefore by now be superseded. We will content ourselves 

 with briefly enumerating those contributions that might stUl be of interest to our readers. 



The first is a long article by Zeeman on primary and secondary waves in developmental 

 biology. He applies the now much debated catastrophe theory to embryogenesis in 

 amphibians and to slime mould culmination. Gierer and Meinhardt discuss pattern forma- 

 tion involving "lateral inhibition" and outUne several possible biological applications. 

 Blomfield (from Lawrence and Crick's group) presents a diffusion model of pattern 

 formation in the insect cuticle. Finally Kopell and Howard discuss "pattern formation" in 

 the Belousov (or Zhabotinskii) reaction, a non-biological oscillating system. 



9. 



A. LINDENMAYER and G. ROZENBERG, eds. 1976. AUTOMATA, LANGUAGES, 



DEVELOPMENT 



North-HoUand, Amsterdam, etc. VIII, 529 pp., 147 figs. Dfl. 120.00, $ 46.00 



This volume is the result of an international conference held in the Netherlands in the 

 spring of 1975. In it took part biologists, mathematicians and computer scientists from 

 many different countries, predominantly in Western Europe. Of the 38 contributions 

 seven are reviews and the rest research reports. 



The papers are arranged in four parts as follows: Mathematical and computer models of 

 development (12 papers). Theory of L systems (17), Cellular automata theory (3), and 

 Parallel graph generating and related systems (6). Almost ail of the papers of direct devel- 

 opmental relevance are to be found in part one. These cover not only branching systems 

 in plants but also a variety of animal developing systems and growth phenomena gener- 

 ally. Two or three papers in the other parts have some relevance to development beyond 

 the strictly mathematical. Part four represents a very new field of research, which may be 

 the first step towards the application of L systems in more than one dimension, in other 

 words, to more complex patterns than those characteristic of linear branching structures. 



202 



