200 



NATURE 



\jFan. i, ii 



have appeared before are derived. The familiar figure in 

 Denham and Clappcrton's work of a mail-clad warrior 

 and horse of Bornu is copied without any kind of ac- 

 knowledgment. Very slight differences have been made 

 in the present figure : thus in it the great toe only is 

 placed in the stirrup instead of the whole foot, as in the 

 original, and the spear-blade is double instead of single, 

 whilst the helmet has a plume added, but all the rest is 

 directly copied without any reason being given for the 

 alterations. A most remarkable defect in the book, 

 considering that it is German and scientific, is the 

 almost entire absence of references to former works of 

 all kinds. As fat as we have been able to discover 

 there are only two references to other books in the 

 entire work, one to Fourncl's " Les Berbes," the other to 

 the publications of the German Geographical Society. 

 Though Barth and Duveyrier are mentioned and their 

 views arc quoted, no references to their writings are 

 given. And Denham and Clapperton are entirely 

 ignored even in the account of Bornu. A serious draw- 

 back is that the book is published so long after the travels 

 to which it relates were completed. We hope that the 

 second volume may not be long in appearing. We 

 understand that the book is shortly to be published in 

 English. It is full of interesting and valuable matter and 

 of scientific details. 



THE SCIENCE OF AGRICULTURE 



First Lessons in the Science of Agriculture j for Use in 

 Indian Elementary Schools or Classes. Pp. 67. By 

 J. B. Fuller. (Calcutta : Stanhope Press, 1879.) 



THIS little primer is issued under the authority of the 

 Department of Agriculture and Commerce, North- 

 west Provinces and Oudh. If its teachings be accepted 

 and followed by those for whom they are intended, 

 increased and improved crops must be the consequence. 

 Of course, within the narrow limits of some seventy small 

 page?, we cannot expect to find the scientific basis of the 

 art of agriculture fully developed ; indeed, the explanations 

 of the materials and processes with which Indian farming 

 is concerned are neither numerous nor full. But to show 

 clearly a few of the worst mistakes made by Eastern 

 cultivators of the soil, and to indicate remedies and im- 

 proved methods of procedure in but half-a-dozen cases, is 

 a useful beginning of an important work. We note, in 

 passing, a few examples of the recommendations, based 

 upon scientific knowledge, which Mr Fuller makes in 

 these " First Lessons." On p. 7 the usefulness of a good 

 tilth and of a feeding-ground deepened by thorough 

 ploughing for crops during seasons of drought, is illus- 

 trated and enforced. We learn from pp. 26 and 27 that 

 due importance is not generally attached to the selection 

 and securing of the best varieties and qualities of seed for 

 sowing the fields. Too often they sow any seed they have 

 by them, the produce of their own fields, and often of 

 inferior quality. Good kinds of grain, &c, are thus found 

 to be confined to one village, though they might be grown 

 successfully in many neighbouring places. Thus, the 

 village of Jalali in the Aligarh district is well known for 

 its fine white wheat ; Sankni, in Bulandshahar, for its 

 salil. er; some districts north-west of Allahabad for 

 indigo, and Hinganghdt for cotton. The value of new 



plants to India is discussed on pp. 31 and 32, the cases 

 cited being tea, the potato, reana, and Egyptian cotton. 

 Passing over a chapter in which some elementary facts 

 about plant-food are given, we find many useful remarks 

 (PP- 37 to 44) on the fertility of the soil and the means of 

 restoring or increasing it. Here we are introduced to rah 

 and v.sar. The former term is applied to the saline 

 efflorescence, which, in some seasons especially, appear 

 in many tracts of land in the North-West Provinces 

 and elsewhere in India. Reh consists mainly of 

 sodium and calcium sulphates, with some common 

 salt and nitrates. The nsar plain is infected with 

 reh, but I cannot agree with Mr. Fuller in con- 

 demning the usar soils as sterile through deficiency of 

 plant-food (p. 38). My analyses of such soils gave in 

 most cases no evidence of deficiencies in the mineral 

 elements of plant-nutrition, they merely showed an 

 excess of soluble salts. What Mr. Fuller says about the 

 best way of getting rid of reh is very judicious, so are his 

 remarks about the sad waste of animal and vegetable 

 residues (including indigo waste, and the bones of bullocks 

 and buffaloes, in India) — residues which, instead of being 

 burnt or neglected, should certainly be much more largely 

 than at present ploughed into the land. His contrast between 

 the work of the Indian plough and the English, the latter 

 doing in one ploughing what the former needs twelve 

 ploughings to accomplish, should be of some real ser- 

 vice, especially as the new English-pattern ploughs made 

 at Cawnpore are very light, and do not cost more than 

 eight rupees apiece. By the use of this improved imple- 

 ment the ",pan," which has been formed two or three 

 inches under so large a tract of Indian soil by the rubbing 

 of the old ploughshares and the trampling of the bullocks, 

 would be broken up, and the rains would penetrate and 

 moisten a much greater depth of soil. Mr. Fuller illus- 

 trates the advantage of increasing by such deep ploughing 

 the depth of water-holding soil. He says : "In Madras, 

 in the year 1S7S, when there was a great famine from the 

 failure of the rains, some land was ploughed with the 

 European plough, and some with the native plough, on 

 the Government farm. Neither was irrigated, and both 

 had to depend for their water on the little rain that fell. 

 The European-ploughed land gave a rice-crop of six 

 maunds per acre ; the native-ploughed land did not yield 

 a single grain." The two last lessons in this useful little 

 book contain some quite satisfactory explanations as to 

 the respective merits of canal and well water, and of thin 

 and thick seeding in India. A. H. C. 



OUR BOOK SHELF 



On the Crystallography of Calcite. By J. R. McD. Irby, 

 B.Sc, of Lynchburg, U.S. (Bonn : Charles Georgi, 

 1878.) 



One is pleased to find that, in an essay on the crys- 

 tallography of calcite, by a gentleman who has received 

 his training in America and Germany, the system of 

 representation used by Prof. Miller has been adopted, 

 and not the objectional modification employed by Pro- 

 fessors Groth and Dana, jun. One regrets that the paper 

 is unaccompanied by a stereographic projection, which 

 would have much simplified the discussion of the distribu- 

 tion and position of the forms. 

 The original part of the essay consists of a criticism 



