SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 275 



before any attempt is made at plant-breeding." "Even when the desired 

 variety is obtained, it must be kept up to the standard by constant attention 

 to selection." The last chapter consists of directions for the pollination of 

 flowers to secure crossing, with illustrations. There are also extended ex- 

 tracts from Verlot on varieties of ornamental plants, Carriere on bud-vari- 

 eties, and Focke on characteristics of crosses. A glossary is appended. 



The Rural Science Series, edited by Prof. Bailey, opens with a volume 

 on spraying.* From the author's chajiter on the early history of liquid 

 applications, it appears that plants have been sprinkled with noxious or 

 irritating substances in order to destroy insects for a century, and very 

 likely much longer. The operation known as spraying, however, has not 

 been practiced for more than ten or fifteen years. The early gardeners 

 seemed to think that anything disagreeable to man would be destructive to 

 insects, and Mr. Lodeman gives a number of their recipes evidently based 

 on this idea. Continuing his history, he narrates the introduction of the 

 Bordeaux mixture, the kerosene emulsion, Paris green, London purple, and 

 the other principal insecticides and fungicides now used, and gives the 

 various methods of spi'aying employed in different countries and in differ- 

 ent parts of the United States. Another historical chapter records the 

 progress in appliances, from the liquid in a bucket and a whisk broom to 

 sprinkle it with, up to the small towers on carts on the top of which men 

 armed with hose pipes go gunning for codlin moths, curculios, canker- 

 worms, and such like game. In another chapter he gives formulas for a 

 large number of preparations used in spraying, and, in still another, specific 

 directions for treating the chief cultivated plants, from almond to willow. 

 He discusses also the action of insecticides and fungicides not only upon 

 the pests that they are directed against, but also upon the host-plant, the 

 crop yielded by it, and the soil in which it grows. There are eighty-six 

 cuts and a portrait of M. Millardet, who introduced the Bordeaux mixture. 

 Both volumes are adequately indexed. 



We have here not the gossip and superficial impressions of a sight-seer, 

 nor yet a volume of laborious measurements and close reasoning. Green- 

 land Icefields is a description of natural features and inhabitants by one 

 who is not too much engrossed in his science when he visits a strange 

 region to notice and write down matters of interest to less scientific mor- 

 tals.! With this descriptive matter is joined a new discussion of the causes 

 of the ice age, embodied in several chapters contributed by Prof. Upham. 

 Prof. Wright tells us first about the ice of the Labrador Current, which 

 was brought forcibly to his attention by the steamer on which he went to 

 Greenland running squarely against an iceberg. This mishap necessitated 

 a stop on the coast of Labrador, and enabled him to gather may interesting 

 observations on the settlements and the Eskimos of this coast. He records 

 also some observations on the Spitzbergen ice that comes down through 

 Davis Strait. Greenland was finally reached at Sukkertoppen, on the 

 western coast, in latitude 65° 30'. Prof. Wright gives us not only the inci- 

 dents of his journeys in this far northern land, but also the chief features 



* The Spraying of Plants. By E. G. Lodeman. Pp. 399, 12mo. London and New York : Mac- 

 millan & Co. Price, $1. 



t Greenland Icefields and Life in the North Atlantic. By G. Frederick Wright and Warren 

 Upham. Pp. 407, 12mo. New York : D. Appleton & Co. Price, $3. 



