to get a rough sense of the work that lies ahead of him. Too frequently the view ahead must seem rather unstructured, and it is virtually certain that in the past some very bright students have been turned away by the apparently nebulous character of the field. Even the attention of browsing students in other social and behavioral sciences will be captured by this book.

But there are also a number of weaknesses, and two points may illustrate these within the very context of concern for teaching and the use of graphical materials for pe- dagogic purposes. First, it is a golden rule in an elementary book never to present the student with a term or measure without (1) having explained what it is previously, or (2) explaining it immediutely after the Fist time it is used. The notion of a stan- dard deviation is a case ln point : used first on page 107 with the normal curve, again on page 110 with the Poisson distri- bution (a standard deviation of a Poisson? ), and again with a diagram on page 111, the student has to reach page 112 before he is told that it is “the square root of the va- riance”. Unfortunately, he will not under- stand this either, for the term variance has neither been encountered nor explained previously. This sort of thing must be tidied up before the second edition.

A second case : factor analysis is introduced in the statistics chapter, and after one para- graph the student finds himself facing a “loading” - one example of many where there are puzzling juxtapositions of element- ary and very difficult ideas. But what is there to help the student at this point? The subsequent discussion must surely rank as one of the most opaque explanations ever written for a beginning student, particularly as he only has a very “cookbookish” back- ground from the rest of the chapter. By the time he reaches an eigenvalue from a hy- perellipsoid two pages later, and continues to sheer inaccuracies on the next page, he must wonder if there is not an easier road to spatial understanding and insight. The feeling must surely be strenthened 150 pages later when he meets yet another “Introduction to Factor Analysis”!

I am being deliberately harsh here because the student is at stake (I have yet to meet anyone who could make head or tail out of this discussion who did not already have a clear grasp of factor analytic techniques), and because the authors know better. For the remedy is readily at hand : in no mul- tivariate area are such clear graphical ex- pressions available. With simple graphics, the vectorial expression of a correlation coefficient as the cosine between two unit vectors gives an immediate mental image that can be extended to principal compo-

nent methods. With a clear visual and geo- metrical expression, such terms as eigen- vector and loading become quite imme diate.

It is easy to make things difficult, but difficult to make things easy. For the most part the authors have succeeded in the latter task, and the proof will be seen in the years ahead as a new generation of students, challenged by the new ways of looking at old problems, come to geo- graphy departments from the schools. Many, I am sure, will have been intrigued originally by this book.

Peter GOULD, Lund

HARBAUGH, J. W. and D. F. MERRIAM (1968): Computer Applications in Strati- graphic Analysis. New York : John Wiley and Sons. 140s.

Though written by specialists for specialists, some books transcend a particular discipline and take honoured places upon many books- helves by the general nature of the problems they tackle. This is such a book, well worth the attention of many whose research and teaching have a distinct spatial component. Geographers, biologists, foresters, ecologists, and many others besides sedimentary petrol@ gists will have their imaginations triggered by the clear verbal and graphical explanations.

A simple discussion of information storage and retrieval leads to questions of mapping procedures by computer, including a very clear presentation of automatic contouring and interpolation methods. The intriguing “entropy maps” are most thought-provok- ing, and they clearly hold promise for many analogous situations across a wide number of the spatial sciences. The presentation of polynomial trend surface analysis is equally clear, and there is a refreshing honesty in the discussion of confidence intervals; an honesty that seems to characterize the work of men who are prepared to leave the purity of mathematical statistics and tackle the difficult - not to say downright dirty - problems of the real world. This reader still has some quibbles and qualms, but he can- not say the authors have not posted clear warnings.

The chapter on harmonic analysis is just a little disappointing, perhaps because the examples are a bit forced. Trend surface analysis, to which double Fourier series are compared, seems to serve well, and it is not exactly clear why harmonic analysis is necessary. And, having whetted the appetite

of the reader with one-demensional spectra, the interpretations of a twodimensional spectrum would have been a useful addi- tion. These are tricky things, and an ex- position by two experienced geologists would have formed a nice complement to many abstract, and mathematically formidable, discussions in other fields. Perhaps such spectra may appear in the second edition, possibly from optical computers which are used increasingly in geologic work because of the ease with which directional faltering may be undertaken in the spectral plane. Classification is dealt with in the now conven- tional ways of numerical taxonomy, and while the discussion is quite elementary it shares the pleasant verbal and graphical clarity of the remainder of the book. Perhaps the best chapter is the last on simulation. With diagram and flow chart, map and matrix, the authors illustrate the way in which dynamic spatial systems may be approached via the computer. Here, perhaps more than in any other area, the machine has extended man’s ability to pose and investigate questions of processes acting through time and over space. To point once again to the generality of such problems over a vast range of the sciences is almost tautological. Do not, therefore, be misled by the title ; this is a book that many who deal with earth and man will find profitable reading.

Peter GOULD, Lund

Topographiiher Atlas Bayem. Herausge- geben vom Bayerischen Landesvermessungs- amt. Auswahl und Interpretation der Karten von H. FEHN in Verbindung mit den Geo- graphischen Instituten der bayerischen Uni- versitaten. 329 Seiten. Miinchen: List, 1969. Leinen 46,- DM.

Zu den bemerkenswertesten geographischen Neuerscheinungen der letzten Jahre ilber einen Teilbereich Mitteleuropas zahlt der Topographische Atlas Bayern. Wer sich ilber das BRD-Bundesland Bayern iuformie- ren will, findet in diesem Atlas die ideale Erganzung zu den iiblichen Hnderkund- lichen Werken. Die 150 ganzseitigen Karten- ausschnitte (24 mal 32 cm) und die beige- gebenen Interpretationen vermitteln einen guten Eindruck von der Vielseitigkeit der bayerischen Landschaften. Diese Mannig- faltigkeit auf relativ begrenztem Raum machte die Auswahl der Kartenausschnitte nicht leicht, doch kann sie, insgesamt be- trachtet, durchaus als reprasentativ ange- sehen werden - such wenn die Alpen etwas bevorzugt wurden.