PUBLICATIONS DEVOTED TO TROPICAL AGRICULTURE 

 AND RESEARCH. 



By W. R. DUNLOP. 



Scientific Assistant to the Imperial Department of 

 Agriculture for the West Indies. 



THE present occasion of the International Congress of 

 Tropical Agriculture would seem to afford a particularly 

 favourable opportunity for approaching a subject of such 

 general and widespread interest as that of the periodicals 

 now circulating in the Tropics. It is self-evident that 

 the geographical situation of tropical countries is such 

 as to render inter-communication, and particularly social 

 intercourse, matters of extreme difficulty, hence journal- 

 istic communication is very essential, and must be 

 regarded as a matter of vital concern in the march of 

 progress of tropical agriculture. 



The sources from which periodicals circulating in the 

 Tropics are issued may be roughly classified as follows : 

 Trade and official (e.g., Colonial Office) publications 

 from England and America; journals issued by Govern- 

 ment Departments and Agricultural Societies in the 

 Tropics; and, in a class somewhat by themselves, the 

 summarizing publications issued by various institutions, 

 examples of such journals being the Monthly Bulletin of 

 Agricultural Intelligence and Plant Diseases, the Experi- 

 ment Station Record, the Review of Applied Entomology, 

 and the Agricultural News. By far the largest number of 

 the publications at present existing come from the second 

 source, and although in most cases these periodicals 

 may be regarded as serving an efficient purpose in the 

 circulation of results, there are, it is thought, certain 

 disadvantages attaching to many of the systems at 

 present in vogue. In the first place it must be at once 

 evident that existing information in tropical agriculture 

 is exceedingly scattered, and the number of periodicals 

 some of them merely leaflets at present in circulation 



