606 BOOK REVIEWS

in bringing together such diverse chemical, physical and geological material within the same book should alone do much to advance this aim.

Anyone with a research interest bordering on sedimentology will find this book a useful reference tool

and it should be recommended as a very fine textbook for second and third year students.

PAMELA NADEN School of Geography, University of Leeds

INTRODUCTION TO SMALL SCALE GEOLOGICAL STRUC- TURES, Gilbert Wilson in collaboration with J. W. Cosgrove, George Allen & Unwin, Heme1 Hempstead, Herts. No. of pages: 128. Price: flO.OO (hardback); €4.95 (paperback).

The aim of this text is to describe the common varieties of small scale structures developed during the deforma- tion of rocks and critically evaluate their significance and origin. After an introduction to stress and strain the reader is given a tour of the geometry and origin of all the common minor structures developed in strained rocks. Many of the minor structures are illus- trated in the characteristic Gilbert Wilson style of line diagrams. Such diagrams are a concise, accurate and artistic representation of the geology which every field geologist strives for.

The importance of the symmetry and stratigraphy of rocks to the evolution of small scale structures is described in Chapters 3 and 4. The characteristic features developed in brittle rocks are presented in

Chapter 5 while a large part of the book deals with the importance of rock cleavage (Chapters 6-8). Sub- sequent chapters deal with boudinage (Chapter 9), minor folds (Chapter 10) and rodding structures (Chap- ter 11). The importance of superimposed minor struc- tures and the correlation of large and small scale struc- tures is discussed in Chapters 12-14.

Large parts of the text are extremely informative and provide an important guide to the structural analysis of an area. However, the text does suffer from a lack of more recent research. Less than one-sixth of the refer- ences listed were published in the last twenty years. As a result terminology which has been shown to have misleading genetic connotations is used. It is a great shame that this text was not published earlier.

R. J. KNIPE Department of Earth Sciences

University of Leeds Leeds LS2 9JT

IGNEOUS ROCKS OF THE BRITISH ISLES. Edited by D. S . Sutherland, Wiley, 1982. No. of pages: xv+645, incl. Appendices, References, and Subject Index. Price: f55.00 (hardback). ISBN 0 471 27810 6.

This book represents the first attempt since Giekie’s 1897 Ancient Volcanoes of Britain to present a system- atic account of igneous activity in the British Isles from Precambrian to Tertiary times. It contains contributions from a spectrum of geologists from British Universities and the Institute of Geological Sciences. Such multiple authorship, whilst not necessarily desirable because -of the lack of continuity it introduces, is essential in a work of this nature if it is to be in any way comprehensive.

The text is arranged chronologically into seven parts reflecting the changing pattern of magmatism throughout the evolutionary history of the British Isles. Within each part the igneous activity is discussed region by region, which in some cases produces a somewhat artificial subdivision. Excellent appendices and a com- prehensive bibliography provide useful data sources for the general petrography, geochemistry and geo- chronology of the igneous rocks of the British Isles.

In view of the great revolutions in petrogenetic think- ing since Giekie’s account, more emphasis has been placed on modern petrology and geochemistry than on descriptive field geology. However, the individual chap- ters are very variable in this respect, in part reflecting the view of the author and in part the availability of data. A serious shortcoming is a virtually complete lack of any attempt to relate the magmatic history of the British Isles to global tectonic processes.

A general reference work of this nature should find its way on to the bookshelves of most geologists in this country, professional and amateur alike. Sadly, there are two fundamental reasons why this will not be the case. The first is that the text has taken several years to produce and consequently a proportion of the con- tained material is now out of date; this is more obvious in some chapters than in others. Second is the prohibi- tively high price, which will even preclude it from the shelves of many libraries.

MARJORIE POWELL Earth Sciences

University of Leeds