Biology and Comparative Physiology of Birds (2 Volume Set)

Biology and Comparative Physiology of Birds (2 Volume Set)

Edited by A. J. Marshall Publisher: Academic Publishers; 1st edition, 1960 and 1961 ISBN-10: 1125968672 ISBN-13: 978-1125968673 986 pages

‘At first the book was meant to be issued in a single volume but it soon became apparent that two would be a more convenient proposition. It is designed not only for professional and amateur ornithologists, but also for general biologists who will find in it at least some of the information that they may need from time to time. A great deal of vital physiological data on domestic birds is already obtainable in Sturkie's Avian Physiology and the Romanoff's The Avian Egg and relatively little of this is repeated by us. Inevitably the present work is not completely integrated. There are of necessity many omissions and again, some chapters overlap. A few discrepancies occur that are hardly to be avoided when a number of people, most of whom are actively engaged in adjacent fields are invited to write precisely what they wish. Each author is responsible for the facts and phraseology in his contribution, but neither he, nor most emphatically the editor, is responsible for the spelling. Some of the spelling employed (in particular the almost total avoidance of hyphens) has resulted in brutalities that will seem to many people something like the penultimate defeat of the English language. My wife, Jane Marshall, has prepared many of the diagrams from sketches or other material submitted by some of the authors, and during the making of the book, Mr. C. M. Hutt and the staff of Academic Press, London, have been enormously helpful to me.’

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