vi DISEASES OF CULTIVATED PLANTS 



representing accurately the views of others, but is competent 

 to give reasons for the faith which he himself professes. 



Mr. Massee has already shown, and nowhere more notably 

 than in A Text-book of Plant Diseases, published by him in 

 1899, second edition 1903, how fully he is endowed with the 

 qualifications required in the author of a work like the pre- 

 sent. Various passages in that Text-book, useful and trust- 

 worthy as it has proved as a guide to the results obtained 

 up to the date of its publication, already, however, serve 

 rather as records of what was then believed than of what is 

 now actually known. A further issue of what has so soon 

 become, in some respects, a historical landmark rather than 

 a conspectus of existing information, being undesirable, 

 Mr. Massee has found it preferable to prepare a new work 

 on somewhat different lines and covering a rather wider 

 field. This work, it is hoped, may take the place of the 

 Text-book, the issue of which has become exhausted, and 

 should prove as helpful to those who stand in so much need 

 of assistance as its predecessor has done. 



D. PRAIN. 



ROYAL BOTANIC GARDENS, 



KEW, z^th January 1910. 



