460 



NA TURE 



[Sept. s i 3, 1883 



India are reproduced ; the original seeds which were ob- 

 tained in South America were sown at Kew, and the 

 youig plants sent thence to the East, but the precarious 

 nature of the undertaking may be inferrel from the fact 

 that only about three per cent, of the seels germinated. 

 It is pleasant to read here and there spontaneous testi- 

 mony to the value of the Royal Gardens at Kew and of 

 the Indian Botanic Gardens. 



Of controversial subjects the coffee leaf disease at- 

 tracted most notice, considerable spice being devoted to 

 the reports and letters of Mr. Marshall Ward, and to the 

 discussions arising therefrom. On p. 15 is a complacent 

 suggestion that as crops cannot always be got from the 

 branches of the coffee tree they might be got in another 

 form from the roots by grinding up the cockchafers that 

 there abound and selling the beetle powder, mixed with a 

 littl; coffee, as real coffee, carrying on the entire manu- 

 facture in Ceylon to prevent any tampering on the part 

 of dishonest middlemen in London ! This pleasant 

 notion is based on the assumption that " the British 

 public will consume anything not absolutely dirt that is 

 sufficiently adulterated to suit their palates." 



The marked contrast between our home agriculture 

 and that of the tropics is afforded in the very few and 

 scanty references to live stock of any kind. English 

 agriculturists are continually relying more and more on 

 their flocks and herds and less on their corn crops for 

 remunerative returns. There is, indeed, a solitary refer- 

 ence to Aden cattle, which are bred inland, and derive 

 their name only from the port whence they are shipped. 

 They have a high reputation as dairy stock, and have 

 been used with success for crossing with some of the 

 Indian herds on the Government farm at Saidapet, 

 Madras. The only allusion to sheep farming is to that of 

 Australia. 



Of course, in such a volume as the one before us, the 

 matter is necessarily of a very heterogeneous character, 

 but it is all concerned more or less directly either with 

 agriculture itself, or with the economic and industrial 

 aspects of the art as pursued in the hotter regions of the 

 globe. As a record of the experience of tropical planters, 

 of the difficulties and drawbacks of climate and of soil 

 they have to contend with, of the good or indifferent 

 results which have attended their efforts at acclimatisa- 

 tion, of the measures they have adopted to minimise the 

 evil effects of insect or fungal attacks, and not less as an 

 interesting historical summary of the progress of tropical 

 agriculture, such a work as this carried out on the lines 

 on which it has been begun cannot fail to possess a per- 

 manent value. Young men especially, who, having learnt 

 something of the art of agriculture in the stern school of 

 British farming, would fain try their skill under a tropical 

 sun, will find collected here a large mass of useful infor- 

 mation such as perhaps it would hardly be possible to 

 obtain elsewhere. \Y. Frea.m 



OUR BOOK SHELF 



Vorlesungen fiber Pflanxen-physiologie. Von Julius Sachs. 

 (Leipzig: Wilhelm Engelmann, 1882-83.) 



The fourth edition of Prof. Sachs's well-known text- 

 book of botany being nearly exhausted, his friends and 

 publishers urged him to set about the preparation of a 



new edition ; but the revisal necessary for the publication 

 of the fourth edition had been so irksome that nothing 

 would induce the author to attempt the task again. 

 Moreover his views on many important questions con- 

 cerning the physiology of plants had change! : points 

 once considered all-important had lost much of their im- 

 portance, and expanded views acquired in the progress 

 of time could not be made to fit into the framework of the 

 old work. 



Prof. Sachs for years has been a most successful 

 teacher of botany. His text-book, large and technical 

 though it was, has had a most successful career in 

 German-speaking countries ; translated into French by an 

 eminent French botanist, and into English under the 

 auspices of the Delegates of the Clarendon Press at Ox- 

 ford, there needed no higher testimonies to its worth ; 

 still, instead of being content with the success of his 

 volume, he now refuses to look at it. and utterly casts it 

 from him. " As long as the artist is pleased with his 

 work, he can add a touch here and there, or can even go 

 in for greater changes ; but this is not sufficient when the 

 work has ceased to be the expression of his idea, and this 

 is the attitude I stand in with regard to my text-book." 

 This state of mind has resulted in the publication of the 

 fine volume which we now notice ; in size and general 

 appearance it differs very little from the author's text-book, 

 but under the style of lectures it appeals to a wider circle 

 of readers than mere college students. Ardently anxious 

 that the very important modern views on plant physiology 

 should be known to all fairly educated people, these 

 lectures, without sacrificing scientific accuracy, are written 

 in a style as free as possible from the fatiguing use of 

 long and purely technical words ; they are purposely 

 written too in a slightly dogmatic style, for it is clearly a 

 lecturer's duty to put before his audience his own indi- 

 vidual views upon even debated questions ; his hearers 

 have a perfect right to know what impresion the general 

 aggregate of scientific facts has made upon his mind, 

 and while this would be out of place in a technical text- 

 book of the science, it harmonises well with a course of 

 lectures. 



At the end of each lecture some — we could have wished 

 for more — bibliographical notes are added for the benefit 

 of those readers who wish to plunge deeper into the 

 subject. 



The publishers wished that a new revised edition of the 

 systematic part of the text-book should have been " tagged ,: 

 on to these lectures, but Prof. Sachs declared that he had 

 neither time nor inclination for the task, which he com- 

 mits to the care of Prof. Gcebel, whose separate treatise 

 on this part of the subject has lately made its appearance. 

 We hope the day may not be far oft" when these charming 

 lectures on plant physiology will be read in English by a 

 large number of our cultivated public. E. P. W. 



Accented Five-figure Logarithms of Numbers from 1 /.< 

 99999 without Differences. Arranged and Accented 

 by L. D'A. Jackson. (London : W. H. Allen, 1883.) 



In this work are comprised two sets of tables. The first 

 set (pp. 1-221) is indicated by the above title-page ; the 

 second is entitled "Accented Five-figure Logarithms of 

 Sines, Tangents, Cotangents, and Cosines of Angles from 

 0° to 90 to every Hundredth of a Degree " (pp. 224-270). 

 There is, further, a one-page " Comparison of French 

 and English Decimal Scientific Systems at 32" and 39 

 Fahrenheit in vacuo." The possessors of the same 

 author's ''Accented Four-figure Logarithms" are alread;, 

 acquainted with his principles of accentuation ; to thosi- 

 who have not this work we need only say that excess and 

 defect are clearly indicated in the printing, and that the 

 degree of accuracy attainable in any piece of calculation 

 is very rarely inferior to that reached by the longer calcu- 

 lations with the ordinary seven-figure tables. The loga 

 rithm of any number is seen at a glance, so that there 



