Eggs: Nature's Perfect Miracle of Packaging

This slim, profusely illustrated volume makes the abstruse subject of embryology accessible to a high school, college, and general adult readership. Describing how eggs of all types are made, fertilized, and develop in animals ranging from simple invertebrates through birds and mammals, the book touches briefly on evolution, reproduction, genetics, and animal behavior. Burton uses photographic sequences to illustrate cell division and differentiation into discrete organs. Showing how differences in environment and incubation manifest themselves in physical structural differences between various species' eggs, he further reveals that such differences mask fundamental similarities of embryo development among species. Recommended. Laurie Tynan, Montgomery Cty.