THE SIERRA CLUB BOOK OF GREAT MAMMALS

Color photos and drawings make this survey--including brief discussions of what makes a mammal, early fossil mammals, endangered species, and examples of nine different orders--attractive for browsing. But a choppy text and fussy format (boxes of odd facts; captioned photos; drawings) limit its usefulness for serious inquiry. Drawings are not to scale; size information is given inconsistently; and scientific names are not used. The text is also often vague (""Camels have a long gestation period""; ""Seals have a lot of blood in their body""), and the glossary inadequate: e.g., it defines ""antler"" as ""one of two hard horns on the head of a male deer...,"" whereas the text describes them as different from horns. List of the 20 orders of mammals; brief index. Pretty but marginal.