24 OCTOBER 1998, page 54

The Royal Road Of Science

Bryan Appleyard LEONARDO'S MOUNTAIN OF CLAMS AND THE DIET OF WORMS: ESSAYS ON NATURAL HISTORY by Stephen Jay Gould Cape, £17.99, pp. 405 h is is Gould's eighth volume of essays......

High Jinks And Low Jokes In Never-land

D.J. Taylor THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION by Gore Vidal Little, Brown. £16.99, pp. 260 • How do the books you see e ewed get read by their reviewers? Well, I picked up Gore......