7 22 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



nearly forty million kilogrammes between 1908 and I9i2,the total world output rising 

 during this period from 194 to 230 million kilogrammes. That is, from being last 

 on the list of the seven great cocoa-producing countries the Gold Coast has leapt 

 to the foremost position ; the others remained practically stationary during these 

 five years, their output in 1912 being as follows (in millions of kilogrammes): 

 Eucador 35 " 5, San Thome 35*5, Brazil 30, San Domingo 2C9, Trinidad 18*9, 

 Venezuela 125. The greatest increase in the amount of cocoa imported for local 

 manufacture during recent years has taken place in the United States, which has 

 replaced France as the most important cocoa-manufacturing country, while England 

 has fallen from second to third place. 



The brief concluding chapter on the cocoa and chocolate industry contains 

 some interesting and little-known facts, such, for instance, as the importance of 

 cocoa-butter as an increasingly valuable and variously used by-product of cocoa 

 manufacture, and the use of the shells or cuticles of the cocoa-fruit as a substitute 

 for tea in Ireland and Switzerland and as a cattle-food and manure elsewhere. 



F. Cavers. 



The Coco-nut. By Edwin Bingham Copeland, Professor of Physiology and 

 Dean of the College of Agriculture, University of the Philippines. [Pp. 

 xiv + 212, with 23 Illustrations.] (London : Macmillan & Co., 1914. 

 Price 10s. net) 



This book is based upon the author's experience in organising and conducting 

 courses of instruction in coco-nut physiology and coco-nut culture at the College 

 of Agriculture of the University of the Philippines, and its aim is the same as that 

 of these courses — namely, to give the knowledge and advice which will qualify a 

 person for the practice of coco-nut raising. 



Throughout the book the author insists upon the importance of general prin- 

 ciples which apply not only to coco-nut culture but to tropical agriculture as a whole. 

 The behaviour of the coco-nut, and of every other cultivated plant, is intelligible 

 in the light of the knowledge of its physiology, and in no other way ; but this 

 common-sense or scientific view is not often so consistently kept to the front as in 

 the case of this book. The natural result is that, although at first sight the book 

 may seem to deal too exclusively with the coco-nut industry of the Philippine Islands 

 in so far as details are concerned, it contains everything that a planter anywhere 

 in the tropics really needs most to know. The author wisely omits various 

 matters which are already sufficiently dealt with in the standard works by Ferguson, 

 Prudhomme, Smith, and others— statistics on the coco-nut industry of different 

 countries and on the commerce in coco-nut products, estimates of the cost of 

 establishing and maintaining plantations, etc. 



The first two chapters, dealing with the physiology of the coco-nut and with 

 climate and soil, contain much that is new, being based upon the author's own 

 investigations, and form a model introduction and foundation such as we should 

 like to see extended to many other cultivated plants. These two chapters repre- 

 sent a really good ecological study of the coco-nut — i.e. of its physiology in relation 

 to its environment ; and there can be no better method of attacking the problems 

 of cultivation than by studying, on modern lines, the ecology of each plant that is 

 to be cultivated — a fact that practical cultivators are at last beginning to appre- 

 ciate. 



The chapter devoted to diseases and pests is considerably the longest in the 

 book ; and here again the ecological view-point adopted by the author makes 



