BOOK REVIEWS 607

are available only on a separate magnetic tape. So, what value for money is obtained forAl04? If the

reader were someone who wishes to use computer car- tography and to gain a broad understanding of the im- plementation of current methods then that reader is not well provided. Yoeli presents a set of routines fossilized in the days when all input/output was carried out on magnetic tape. This certainly is not the general situation now in Europe, North America, or Australasia. Recent developments in disk technology are fast reducing mag- netic tape to data transfer uses. A broad overview is best ob- tained by Monmonier (19821, giving a net saving of A89.

A second type of reader may wish to produce computer maps and become a little more knowledgeable about techniques such as data structures and line generalization. Again Monmonier (1982) is markedly more up to date. Furthermore there is available a wide range of published subroutines in the works of authors such as Baxter (1976) and Douglas (undated), and I do not feel that Yoeli adds much. He tinkers about with the sorts of symbol and line- drawing routines that are available in most low-level graphics systems (GINO, GHOST, etc.). The cursory treatment he gives to line generalization, the total omis- sion of enhancement combined with a simplistic treat- ment of data structures, all combine to provide the reader with a superficial insight into the problems of dealing with spatial data in a computer environment. For example, two pages are given to a basic sorting routine only for the user to be advised that it is inefficient for anything over 50 i t e m s s o why bother? Area searches are ponderously treated and Baxter (1976) has a much more elegant approach.

A third group of readers are those who are systems managers who wish to implement a computer mapping package on their system. My estimate is that the effort

required to transform these routines into a well-interfaced user-friendly mapping system would be excessive. Then again why even attempt since (although it is curiously absent from Yoeli’s bibliography) there are tried-and- trusted packages. For the do-it-yourself approach there are the extremely efficient routines of Rase (1980) for two- and three-dimensional symbol drawing. There are the programs from the Harvard Laboratory for Computer Graphics and, of course, the superb GIMMS system of Waugh (1980) which is as far ahead of Yoeli’s approach as a Kray computer is to a hand-cranked calculator. Furthermore, GIMMS is internationally validated, ex- tremely flexible and very competitively priced.

In conclusion I wonder what motivated the editors of Computer Applications to produce a special issue, on Computer Cartography, which is so obviously dated. It is a poor advertisement for computer usage and does little to move people towards an Information Systems approach so dominant in the recent literature that Yoeli omits to reference.

MICHAEL BLAKEMORE University of Durham

REFERENCES

Baxter, R. S. 1976. Computer and Statistical Techniques for Planners, London. Methuen.

Douglas, D. undated. Collected Algorithms, Harvard Laboratory for Computer Graphics and Spatial Analysis.

Monmonier, M. S. 1982. Computer-assisted Cartography: Principles and Prospects, Englewood Cliffs, N.J. Prentice Hall.

Rase, W. 1980. ‘A family of subroutines for plotting graduated symbol maps’, Geo-processing, 1, 231-242.

Waugh, T. C. 1980. ‘The Development of the GIMMS Computer Mapping System’, in Taylor, D. R. F., The Computer in Contemporary Cartography, Chichester. Wiley, pp. 219-234.

LANDFORMS OF NEW ZEALAND. J. M. Soons and M. J. Selby (Eds). Longman Paul, 1982. No. of pages: 392 (incl. Glossary and Index). Price: $34.95. ISBN 58271786 8.

A world audience has waited 60 years for this book. 1922 saw the first appearance of the late Sir Charles Cotton’s Geomorphology of New Zealand, Part I, Systematic, the forerunner, not of the anticipated Part 11, Regional, but of several other systematic textbooks which were widely used (and frequently reprinted) until the 1960s. Though Cotton’s richly illustrated texts introduced successive generations of students to the profusion of museum specimens of constructional and erosional forms in New Zealand, they contained no regional treatments of the country’s geomorphology. These are now provided in this wellconceived, -structured and -illustrated volume.

Twenty-seven contributors from a range of earth science disciplines have distilled the results of the last twenty-or-so years of research into six thematic chapters (Geological perspective, Age and development of the NZ landscape, Stability of hillslopes, Erosion processes in the mountains, Coasts, Karst) and thirteen regional chapters (eight on N. Island landscapes, five on the S. Island).

Inevitably the coverage is uneven-as much ‘a reflection of the nature of the country’ as of ‘the small number of people actively concerned with research into landform development’-but the overall quality of the contri- butions is high.

No short review can do justice to the wealth of new information that is incorporated in this exemplary ac- count of landform development in a geologically diverse country lying athwart the boundary between two major crustal plates and occupying a maritime, mid-latitude position ‘such that it has been particularly sensitive to the climatic fluctuations of the Quaternary Period. For this high-energy environment the vigour of earth modelling processes-tectonic, volcanic, glacial, fluvial, coastal, and mass wasting-is well documented and the often spec- tacular results of those processes are well shown in 188 half-tone illustrations (including many superb aerial obliques). Rapidity ofchange is the dominant theme: New Zealand is not only a museum of Quaternary landscapes but also an unrivalled outdoor laboratory of landform genesis.

RONALD WATERS University of She@eld