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A Text-Book of Plant Diseases. By George Massee, F.L.S., 

 pp. xi., and 458, 89 figs, in text. London : Duckworth & Co., 

 1899. Price 5s. net. 



The study of Vegetable Pathology has of late years made very 

 rapid strides, and considering its vast importa.nce, as affecting 

 the chief food substances of man and animals, it is second only to 

 the study of the diseases directly concerning ourselves. Putting 

 aside the sufficiently serious ravages to the plant world caused by 

 insect larvae, coccids, and so forth, probably the greatest danger 

 to our crops, orchards and gardens, lies in the attacks of the lower 

 orders of plants, viz., fungi and bacteria, especially the former, 

 which are able to and often have devastated whole regions, and so 

 brought about ruin, distress and famine. From his position as 

 principal assistant in the cryptogamic department at Kew, few 

 men in this country possess more knowledge or have better oppor- 

 tunities of studying these pestilential, but extremely interesting, 

 foes than Mr. Massee ; and his work on Plant Diseases should be 

 as valuable to the farmer and horticulturist, who will take the 

 trouble to digest it, as it certainly is interesting to the mere 

 microscopist or botanical student. The various diseases and the 

 particular fungi, etc., which cause them, are treated of as fully as 

 the limits of the work permit or the ability of the class, for which 

 it is presumably chiefly intended, to understand allows ; indeed 

 we fear, as it is, it may be beyond the grasp of all but the more 

 modern native agriculturists, who have had the benefit of a special 

 training. The references to authorities and monographs are suffi- 

 ciently full, and the figures mostly good, bnt of the preventive or 

 other treatment we have no right to say more than that it pro- 

 bably represents the best modern practice. The two indexes, of 

 parasites and of host plants, make reference easy, and are not the 

 least useful feature of a very admirable book. 



