E.O. WiLson, editor, NationalAcademy Press; Washington, D.C.; 496 pages, $19.50 (paperback); $32.50 (hardback) People have far fewer genes than do salamanders or many flowering plants, says Wilson as he piles up statistics to demon- strate the abundance of genetic information stored in living things. This richness—and its fragility—are examined from different angles by this volume’s 55 contributors.

PATTERNING IN SEED PLANT SPECIES

Jonathan D. Sauer, University of California Press; Berkeley; 282 pages; $45 Sauer, a geography professor at UCLA, says that he wanted actual case studies of plant migration because he didn’t find the current deductions about changes in plant distribution “all that convincing.” His new book assembles these case studies, some drawn from fossil records, some from field work.

THE ART OF SCIENTIFIC COMPUTING

W.H. Press, B.P Flannery, SA. Teukolsky, WT Vettering; Cambridge University Press; Cambridge; 735 pages; $44.50 Two years ago these authors published a Fortran and Pascal...

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