P. Willmer, G. Stone and I. Johnston Blackwell Publishing(2005) 754 pp. ISBN 1-4051-0724-3 (hbk) US$99.95, £34.99
Many physiologists, most of us now middle aged, cut our scientific `teeth'on the words of the masters; Scholander, Schmidt-Nielsen, Prosser, Johansen and Bartholomew. These scientists tackled the problems of `How Animals Work'using strongly mechanistic and adaptational approaches. The student textbooks of the'70s and'80s summarised the mechanistic and adaptational approach clearly and succinctly and instilled in the budding scientist the mantra of the founder of Comparative Physiology, August Krogh, that `for every problem in biology there is an ideal animal to study it in.' Whilst rereading Gordon et al.'s Animal Physiology(1982), McFarland et al.'s Vertebrate Life (1979)and Schmidt-Nielsen's How Animals Work(1972), as part of the process for this current review, it is certainly clear that, not only do these early texts provide quality descriptions of...
