Book Reviews 953

which, however, introduces much new material and food for thought which, worthwhile in itself, did not seem well-placed with the rest of the book.

The main body of the text is about developing coding schemes, recording behavioural sequences, assessing observer agreement, representing obser- vational data, and analysing sequential data and event sequences. Much of this would be very sound and useful material for those for whom the book is intended. There is an interesting discussion of how coding schemes are developed, and I liked their concept of'categorical overkill' (page 21), referring to investigators who go down to excessive coding detail when any pragmatic assessment would be that such detail can never be fruitfully analysed. They distinguish between 'physical' and 'social' based coding schemes, with the latter involving some inference on the observer's part (or negotia- tion between observers) of the meaning of a behaviour. They prefer physically based categories but would not reject socially based categories for some purposes. A coding scheme is viewed as a theoretical act, so that using someone else's coding scheme will often not be appropriate. The authors do give other points of view on these issues a reasonable hearing. Some reference to the early observational work on children of the 1930s might have been useful both here and in other parts of the book. Arrington (1931) for example discusses the evolution of a coding scheme in some detail, going through four successive ways of classifying social and material activities of preschool children.

The chapter on observer agreement highlights Cohen's Kappa as a generally useful measure. Details of calculations are gone through in the text. This is an authoritative section which should be very useful to students.

As a general book on observational techniques, a recent comparison is the book by Martin & Bateson (1986). The latter is more directed to animal research, has a more straightforward style, and is less biased to the particular research interests and idiosyncracies of the authors. It covers a greater range of topics, but does not venture into sequential and time-series analysis. The Bakeman & Gottman book thus does complement the Mar- tin & Bateson book in its emphases. The two chapters on sequential data analysis will be a useful resource for those planning such techniques. I would not rate it as highly as the Martin & Bateson book for general style and integration, but the greater detail (such as working out of calculations) in some sections may be especially helpful to students. Altogether a useful text to recommend, but I did feel that some extra time and thought

from the two authors might have led me to give it an 'outstanding' rather than just a 'good' rating.

P. K. SMITH Department of Psychology, University of Sheffield, Sheffield SIO 2TN, U.K.

References

Arrington, R. 1931. Interrelations in the Behavior of Young Children. New York: Teachers College, Colum- bia University.

Martin, P. & Bateson, P. 1986. Measuring Behaviour: An Introductory Guide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Red Fox: The Catlike Canine. by J. DAVID HENRY. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press (1986). Pp. 174. Price $22.50.

In the opening pages of his book Red Fox: The Catlike Canine, David Henry acknowledges his wife for teaching him, amongst other things, the use of language. It seems he learnt the lessons well, for this book is not only informative, but written with great charm and sensitivity.

The eight chapters are carefully structured to show how Henry's research progressed from his early encounters with foxes to more and more precise questions about the relationships between their anatomy, their lifestyle and their behaviour towards prey. The story culminates with a detailed, but highly readable account of the ingenious field experiments which led to the 'book keeping hypothesis' originally formulated by Henry in 1976. The steps in this progression, and a good insight into scientific method, are emphasized by a flow diagram (depicting the links in the argument) which recurs in the text with the successive addition of increasing numbers of boxes and arrows until a complex web relates caching behaviour to prey size to social system to sexual dimorphism to male dispersal and so on.

David Henry's research was undertaken in the Prince Albert National Park, a 1500 square mile sanctuary in Saskatchewan. There, 50 years of protection have resulted in the red foxes losing their fear of people and becoming largely diurnal. Thus, further currying favour through the judicious distribution of tidbits, Henry was able to jog along beside the foxes as they foraged, a situation beyond the wildest dreams of fox-watchers in most habi-

954 Animal Behaviour, 35, 3

tats. The resulting observations are at a level of intimacy that is unusual in studies of temperate mammals. Amongst the many intriguing insights were those of foxes launching themselves into 25-ft jumps, and landing with uncanny precision on hidden mice. A fascination with this ability led the author to unearth, from a school physics book, a formula describing the propulsion of rockets, and thereafter to explore the details of vulpine aerody- namics and to discover that foxes are built like guided missiles (in particular, for their linear dimensions, foxes are relatively very light for their size in comparison to other canids).

The concluding chapters of the book deal mostly with the link between food hoarding and scent marking, as formalized in the book-keeping hypothesis. This hypothesis proposes that the few drops of urine often sprinkled by foxes on emptied food caches serve as a reminder, should the fox pass

that way subsequently, that he has already emptied that cache, and therefore should not waste further time on it, despite any residual appetizing odours. The account in the book contains many interesting anecdotes not presented in the original technical papers.

The text is illustrated with both colour and black and white photographs, and is backed by some 138 technical footnotes, a bibliography and several numerical tables. The story in this book is a scientific one, but it is told with such clarity and warmth that it should intrigue both layman and scientist alike.

Department of Zoology, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3PS, U.K.

D. W. MACDONALD