BOOK REVIEWS 255

consideration: even so anyone with a developing interest in quantitative palaeoecology is

likely to find most of the text both useful and absorbing. Because it stops just short of
multivariate analysis readers with a basic grounding in statistics will find this book less
useful, apart from in its coverage of circular distributions. In many ways it is an ideal
University course-book and useful at both undergraduate and research levels. The price is
perhaps somewhat of a deterrent, since other texts acting as an introduction to the use of
statistics in the biological sciences are available at markedly less.

MARTIN C. D. SPEIGHT

Manual of Planktonic Foraminifera. J. A. Postuma. Elsevier, Amsterdam, 197 I, 420 pp.,

Dfl. 90.-.

This publication deals with a subject that has had considerable vogue in the last
two decades, particularly with the exploration divisions of oil companies. During this
time the superior properties of the planktonic Foraminifera for the correlation of
Mesozoic and especially Tertiary deposits has stimulated a great deal of research in the
micropalaeontological laboratories of oil companies. It may be safely stated that most
of the major companies and several consulting bodies have depended heavily on the
planktonic Foraminifera for their age determinations in these strata. Their value for this
purpose has also been recognised outside the industrial field and their status as a major
means for dating oceanic sediments, and in general geologic surveys, is now widely
recognised.
Although so much work has been done, no concise and convenient catalogue of the
key species has been published. It is certain that anyone so long associated with the
Shell Oil Company would be in a position to produce a workable and well tested manual
based on world wide experience, and this book gives the appearance of having been
conceived as a practical volume well tried and tested in practice.
It is elegantly and generously produced. There is a selection of the 160 species
considered most important for correlation. Each is well illustrated with a page of
photographs and drawings in a way that makes comparison easy and diagnostic features
clearly visible.'Facing each page is the written description together with information
about the original author, type locality and stratigraphic range. Three range charts are
given; Albian-Maastrichtian, Paleocene-Eocene and Oligocene-Recent. These are
clear and easily read. Alternative zonal names are given in the Oligocene-Recent chart.
Local zonal schemes for Trinidad, Italy and Egypt are given for the Paleocene-Eocene
and for Trinidad, North Africa and Gulf Coast for the Cretaceous. A key is produced
to assist identification of the genera whose diagnoses and synonymies are listed. There is
also a brief description of the zones.
It is undoubtedly an easy and practical manual to use and would enable the non-expert
256 BOOK REVIEWS

to achieve a good score in correctly dating samples using planktonic foraminifera. I

doubt if it would satisfy the practising expert who will have at hand the relevant volumes
of the Index of Foraminifera or his own index, but it will be used as a reference book
by students and enquirers who do not have these resources.

C. DOWN1E(Sheffield)

Molecular Evolution 1: Chemical Evolution and the Origin of Life. Ren6 Buvet and
Cyril Ponnamperuma (Editors). North-Holland Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1971,
560 pp., U.S.$ 22.25.

"How did life originate" clearly does not have a single unique answer, nor is it perceived
operationally as a single problem. This book provides active chemists, physicists, biologists
and astronomers with up-to-date information on the status of many problems related to the
question of how, where and when terrestrial life originated. Typical of collected papers,
stemming from a truly international conference, the book is more a smorgasbord than a
gourmet dinner. In the introductory section, Part I, Oparin has a charming paper of
historical interest, arguing that given the early environment of the earth and the rules of
organic chemistry, life is a far more probable event than many calculators of the improb-
able have realized. Florkin argues persuasively for the validity of biochemical evidence for
evolution extractable from well-dated fossils. When evaluated in the proper morphological
(i.e., electron microscopical) and sedimentological context, apparently homologies between
fossil molluscan (cephalopod, gastropod, and pelecypod) as well as dinosaur egg protein
can be investigated on the basis of direct study of fossil protein. Even though the total
amount of protein decreases with age of the fossil (some as old as Silurian have been
studied) and the relative proportion of glycine and alanine are lower in older fossils, Florkin
predicts a stunning future for this sort of work and counters-claims that only individual
amino acids can persist longer than 25,000 years.
The second part of the book deals with general and theoretical problems with papers by
Progagine and Babloyantz (Universit6 Libre de Bruxelles, "Coherent structures and thermo-
dynamic stability"), Morowitz (Yale University, "An energetic approach to prebiological
chemistry") and Buvet and his co-workers, (Paris, "Energetic continuity between present-
day and primeval synthesis of biological compounds"). The importance of explaining the
origin of a functioning perpetuating system rather than just biomonomers and polymers is
stressed in Pattees paper (Stanford University, "The recognition of description and function
in chemical reaction networks"). The paper of the Amariglios (Nancy, "Unsuccessful
attempts of asymmetric synthesis under the influence of optically active quartz") that
argues "life itself is accountable for the dissymmetry of living matter" makes interesting
reading juxtaposed to Harada's (Miami, "Origin and development of optical activity of bio-
organic compounds on the primordial earth") argument which includes the statement