Text-book of Embryology

Abstract

THE appearance of Balfour's great work on comparative embryology in 1880 marked an epoch in the history of zoology. Since then not only has a vast quantity of new information been acquired, but whole new branches of the study have been developed. For instance, we now have the science of experimental embryology, which aims at discovering the conditions and regulative processes of differentiation and development—a science founded by Roux, Driesch, and others; while to E. B. Wilson and other American observers we owe the study of cell-lineage, whereby the prospect is Opened up of being able to trace back homologous organs not merely to germ-layers, but to corresponding individual cells in the early history of the embryo. To give a clear and concise account of these modern researches is indeed a difficult task. Prof. MacBride is the first Englishman to make the attempt, and it may be said at once that he has been, on the whole, most successful.

Text-book of Embryology.

Edited by W. Heape. Vol. i. Invertebrata. By Prof. E. W. Mac-Bride. Pp. xxxii + 692. (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1914.) Price 25s. net.