REV IE W- " INDIAN INSECT PESTS. " 183 



ledge. But this book is written in English and he cannot read his own 

 language, so it is impossible for him to derive any benefit from it directly. 

 On the other hand the class who should lead and show him the way is want- 

 ing. It is a lamentable fact that practical agriculture has little attraction 

 for the very class of people who compass heaven and earth to obtain land. 

 There are bright exceptions, educated zamindars or landholders who 

 endeavour to apply their education to the improvement of the means by which 

 the great bulk of their countrymen earn their bread. But these are very 

 few. In one direction we see hope. The agricultural schools which are being 

 established all over the country and the experimental farms are gradually 

 creating a class of men whose vocation is agriculture and whose minds have 

 been imbued with some Western ideas about it. Through these we may 

 confidently hope that the new knowledge may gradually be disseminated 

 among the peasautry. And it is not impossible that " Indian Insect Pests " 

 may form the basis of a simple vernacular literature on the same subject. 

 In the meantime it will be welcomed as a much needed aid by many of those 

 officers of an alien race whose duty it is to exact from the poor stupid peasant 

 what he owes to their Government, but whose sympathetic efforts go out in 

 so many directions for the betterment of his lot. 



