carefully planned compilation, for specialist workers rather than for students, with experts contributing chapters on each

phylum. The fourth volume in the series concerns oocyte maturation, fertilisation, early development and parental care: the present book (Clitellate annelids to Urochordates) is the second and final part of this volume. The contents may be considered in four sections: clitellate annelids, minor phyla, arthropod phyla and Echinoderms with Urochordates. Perhaps it is unfortunate to separate the annelids into different volumes, but within the Clitellata, generalisations do for once appear to hold. There is uniformity in that fertilisation is internal (or intra-cocoon), the eggs are relatively yolky, larvae are absent and adults are hermaphrodite. There is reduced opportunity for experimentation and the account inevitably cannot match the riches obtained from Polychaetes. Description derives from an earlier era of embryology with such terms as determinate and not absolutely mosaic. Minor phyla (an unfairly pejorative description of which the authors are not guilty) covered are Pogonophora, Tardigrada, Pentastoma (here Pentastomida), Phorona (Phoronida) , Bryozoa (which surprisingly includes Entoprocta), Brachiopoda and Chaetognatha. For those groups where relatively little is known about early development, it is especially valuable to have a summary of available information. Further, phylogenetic relationships have largely been defined in terms of early embryology, and some of these phyla are puzzles or postulated bridges. For the Pogonophora, for example, available information (mainly concerning Siboglinum species) appears to justify classification close to Annelida. Phorona remain controversial. Chaetognaths are entirely hermaphrodite, and the interest of this comprehensive review of their reproduction arises more from consequences of this fact than from any light thrown on evolutionary relationships. In general, detailed study of early development confirms the impression that convergent evolution is a phenomenon so common that developmental resemblance cannot be assumed to prove close evolutionary relationship. Arthropod phyla discussed include Onychophora (mostly with some degree of viviparity but with remarkably variable early development) Chelicerata (an account concerned primarily with sperm transfer) and Crustacea (ripe for investigation by modern techniques). The total omission of Insecta is startling. No doubt this stems from an excess of information: the contribution of work on Drosuphila to our understanding of the genetic control of development could alone fill a volume. (I was guilty of the same omission in my final degree papers - Since insects are the largest and most important group of animals said Professor Wigglesworth perhaps you were well advised). Insects are also omitted from earlier volumes of this work, except 3, Accessory sex glands. A statement concern-

ing the omission would be welcome, and perhaps. as well, a qualification of the assertion that (noother group of invertebrates has been as well studies as the Echinodermata. The chapter on Echinoderms provides a particularly useful summary of the incorporation of molecular and cell biology techniques with the riches of older experimental results on these most accessible eggs and embryos, with discussion of the role of Ca++ ions and the storage of maternal mRNA. This section, with 25 pages of rcferences, is perhaps the most valuable in the entire book. The chapter on Ascidiacea similarly emphasises current and recent investigation. Work on the remaining Urochordates is still primarily descriptive; a new full account of Oikopleura dioica is welcome. One must conclude with gratitude to K.G. and R. G. Akiyodi and good wishes for their future volumes. Janet Moore, Dept. of Zoology, Cambridge CB2
3EJ, UK.

The Chicken, and the Egg

The Avian Mudel in Developmental Biology: from Organism to Genes (1990). Edited by N. LE DOUARIN, F. DIETERLEN-LIEVKE AND J. SMITH. Editions du CNRS, Paris. 319pp. 250 FFr. By Peter G. H. Clarke As Aristotle realised, avian embryos are the ideal objects for experimental studies. They are readily accessible for experimental manipulation throughout the whole period of morphogenesis and organogenesis, and yet they develop according to essentially the same rules as mammaIs. Over the last two decades, the use of avian embryos has been rendered all the more attractive by the discovery that cells grafted from quails into chicks can be distinguished on the basis of heterochromatic DNA associated with the quail nucleoli. This simple fact has opened the way for a wide range of cell tracing experiments designed to reveal where particular cells come from and how they migrate, and to unravel the contributions of cellular origins and of subsequent interactions in the determination of phenotype. The present camera-quick, multi-author volume stems from an EMBO workshop on avian embryo manipulation, held in December 1989 in the very heartland of quail-to-chick transplantation, the Tnstitut dEmbryologie Cellulaire et MolCculaire of the CNRS in the Parisian suburb of Nogent-sur-Marne. The central role of the host institute is illustrated by the fact that at least 11 of the 23 chapters report work done at Nogent, and 3 more are by people who had previously worked thcre. Although the book is in English, we are reminded of its Parisian origins by the fact that the chapter summaries are in both English and French. There are four sections. The first, Developmental

Neurobiology (9 chapters), emphasizes the general cell biological question of how lineage and cellular interactions combine to determine phenotype, but there are also chapters on axonal pathfinding and on the development of species-specific behaviour in quailchick chimaeric brains. The second section, Myogenesis (2 chapters), deals with the distribution of muscleforming cells in the blastodisc and neural influences on muscle development. The third section. Hemopoiesis, contains two chapters on cell lineages in the hemopoietic and vascular systems, and five chapters on various aspects of developmental immunology, including the observation that a permanent state of tolerance to quail wing bud or bursa of Fabricius can be induced in chick hosts if quail thymus is grafted along with one of these organs. The final section, Adhesion molecules, growth factors, genes contains five chapters on integrins, on insulin-like growth factor 1and its receptors, on the role of cMGF in oncogene cooperation, on chicken genes homologous to developmental genes in mice or Drosophila, and on the Trk proteins (in mice, not birds). The latter chapter prefigures the important more recent discovery that the Trk proteins are neurotrophin reccptors. Although the overall standard of the chapters is high, and unusually consistent for a multi-author volume, I was disappointed at the lack of synthesis and overall coherence. Most of the research reported is by now available in more detail in journals, so why bring it

together in a single volume? There are generally two good reasons for doing this: for the convenience of readers who are interested in a large proportion of the chapters; or to provide the editors with an opportunity to synthesize creatively. But the various authors do not reach out to other disciplines as they might have done, for instance, by discussing how their methodologies could be adapted to answering totally different questions (in avian embryos); indeed, techniques are not emphasized. And the editors have made no attempt at synthesis. I would have likcd them to draw together the threads, so as to highlight the advantages and disadvantages of working on avian embryos, and to discuss how diverse techniqucs developed in various disciplines might or might not be usefully combined. But no such overview is provided. There is no index. Notwithstanding the lack of synthesis, this is an interesting collection of papers that illustrate the potentiality of the avian model as (to quote the brief Forward by the editors) a focal system in which the techniques of experimental embryology and molecular biology can converge to reply to fundamental questions of developmental biology.
Peter G. H. Clarke, Institut dAnatomie, Universitk de Lausanne, Rue du Bugnon 9, 1005 Lausanne,

Switzerland.