MISCELLANEOUS SUBJECTS JO1 



is remarkably large. This, however, cannot altogether 

 be avoided, since many of them are intended principally 

 for a specially limited local circulation; but there does 

 exist a tendency on the part of every society or depart- 

 ment that comes into existence to feel that its proper 

 independence or status is not firmly established unless it 

 itself published the results of its own work. In many 

 instances this is quite unnecessary, and is frequently the 

 cause of work which really has some general significance 

 not being regarded as such. It is true that the large 

 mass of published matter which is travelling from one 

 tropical country to another is sifted in the clearing-houses 

 of the institutions where summarizing publications are 

 issued, but it will be seen that the want of centralization 

 in regard to publication work, besides incurring the risk 

 mentioned above, has a further disadvantage in that it 

 places greater strain upon the work of these clearing- 

 houses. As an example of the benefit that accrues from 

 centralization, reference may be made to the work of 

 the Imperial Department of Agriculture, which issues 

 publications for various colonies; but even in the West 

 Indies there is a great deal of local publication work done 

 which might with more advantage be carried out at a 

 central office. 



Another disadvantage attendant on the circulation and 

 storage of facts in the Tropics is the admixture of widely 

 different kinds in the same journal. Many of the so- 

 called agricultural journals, for instance, contain articles 

 of both the agricultural and the scientific kind. By 

 " scientific " is meant information that is principally of 

 value only to specialists for instance, entomological and 

 mycological systematic studies. Not only does much of 

 this literature fail to appeal to the planters, but its 

 existence in a journal devoted to general agriculture 

 involves a large amount of trouble on the part of the 

 specialist, who has to hunt up references scattered 

 through endless publications which are principally devoted 

 to lines of work entirely different from his own. 



This consideration thus leads us to realize that the 

 want of specialization in tropical publications not only 

 necessitates a very wide range of reading, but it also 



