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Grass: Its production and utilisation
124
Book reviews
particular catchment models and on selection, calibration and testing of models. The final impact of the book is of a great deal of methodology but few applications and very little advice and guidance on the methodology appropriate for a given practical problem. The final chapter presents abstracts of some 74 different small catchment models with no additional discussion about the value of different models in relation to the processes addressed earlier in the book. This book, although a comprehensive review of methodology and a quick guide to the US research literature up to the late 1970s, fails as an introduction to model building for small catchments. (No reference later than 1978 was found and only a few are later than 1976.) While differences between different modelling strategies are made clear, neither the graduate student nor the consultant is provided with the information necessary to make the important choices between model structures. The collective experience of the authors could have left a more valuable and a less dated legacy. J. S. G. McCulloch
Holmes, W. (Ed.). Grass: Its Production and Utilisation. Published for the British Grassland Society by Blackwell Scientific Publications, Oxford, 1980 (reprinted 1983). Price: £9.50. This volume was reviewed in Agricultural Systems Vol. 8, No. 3, 1982. It has now been reprinted with some minor corrections and with updating of some factual information, principally on financial aspects. It remains a very useful book for both farmers and students.
R. S. Tayler
Energy Analysis and Agriculture: An Application to U.S. Corn Production. By Vaclav Smil, Paul Nachman and Thomas V. Long II. Bowker Publishing Company, Epping, Essex. 1983. xvi + 191 pp. Price: £21.75. The 1973 paper by Pimentel et al., 'Food production and the energy crisis', in Science, is one of the 'classics' of energy analysis applied to
Book reviews
particular catchment models and on selection, calibration and testing of models. The final impact of the book is of a great deal of methodology but few applications and very little advice and guidance on the methodology appropriate for a given practical problem. The final chapter presents abstracts of some 74 different small catchment models with no additional discussion about the value of different models in relation to the processes addressed earlier in the book. This book, although a comprehensive review of methodology and a quick guide to the US research literature up to the late 1970s, fails as an introduction to model building for small catchments. (No reference later than 1978 was found and only a few are later than 1976.) While differences between different modelling strategies are made clear, neither the graduate student nor the consultant is provided with the information necessary to make the important choices between model structures. The collective experience of the authors could have left a more valuable and a less dated legacy. J. S. G. McCulloch
Holmes, W. (Ed.). Grass: Its Production and Utilisation. Published for the British Grassland Society by Blackwell Scientific Publications, Oxford, 1980 (reprinted 1983). Price: £9.50. This volume was reviewed in Agricultural Systems Vol. 8, No. 3, 1982. It has now been reprinted with some minor corrections and with updating of some factual information, principally on financial aspects. It remains a very useful book for both farmers and students.
R. S. Tayler
Energy Analysis and Agriculture: An Application to U.S. Corn Production. By Vaclav Smil, Paul Nachman and Thomas V. Long II. Bowker Publishing Company, Epping, Essex. 1983. xvi + 191 pp. Price: £21.75. The 1973 paper by Pimentel et al., 'Food production and the energy crisis', in Science, is one of the 'classics' of energy analysis applied to