Our understanding of the ecology of running waters has come a long way during the past few years. From being a largely descriptive subject, with a few under tones concerned with such things as fisheries, pollution or control of blackflies, it has evolved into a discipline with hypotheses, such as the River Continuum Concept (Vannote et a/. 1980), and even a book suggesting that it offers opportunity for the testing of ecological theory (Barnes & Minshall 1983). However, perusal of the literature reveals that, although some of the very early studies were concerned with large rivers (references in Hynes 1970), the great mass of the work that has been done on running water has been on streams and small rivers, and information on larger rivers is either on such limited topics as fisheries or plankton, scattered among the journals, or not available to the general limnologist. The only exceptions are a few books in this series of publications, such as those on the Nile (Rz6ska 1976), the Volga (Morduckai Boltovskoi 1979) and the Amazon {Sioli 1984), and the recent compendium by Whitton (1984) on European rivers, among which there are a few that rate as large.

The seven volumes in this series contain reproductions of papers that the individual editors regarded as the initiators of critical concepts in geomorphology.

1919/28 cumulation includes material previously issued in the 1919/20-1935/36 issues and also material not published separately for 1927/28. 1929/39 cumulation includes material previously issued in the 1929/30-1935/36 issues and also material for 1937-39 not published separately.

A 1949 drill site in the Naval Petroleum Reserve Number 4, Alaska, the Fish Creek Test Well 1, was examined in August 1977 to determine the disturbance caused by drilling activities and to analyze the response and recover of the vegetation, soils, permafrost, and surficial materials to that distrubance. The site, abandoned in 1949, is located along Camp Creek, a tributary to Fish Creek located 28 km. south of Atigaru Point and west of Nuiqsut.

Following on from the first two volumes, published in 2002, volumes 3 and 4 of Characterisation and Engineering Properties of Natural Soils review laboratory testing, in-situ testing, and methods of characterising natural soil variability, illustrated by actual site data. Less well-documented soil types are highlighted and the various papers take i