72 
for adequate legislation and for effective con- 
trol of the lobster fishery. 
Puitie B. Hapiry 
Kineston, R. I. 
Farmers of Forty Centuries, or Permanent 
Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan. 
By F. H. Kine, D.Se. Published by Mrs. 
F. H. King, Madison, Wis. 8vo. Pp. 441, 
248 illustrations. 1911. 
A more wholesome work at the present stage 
in agricultural agitation in this country could 
scarcely be written; nor could it well come 
from one better fitted to write it, for the tenor 
of the story falls closely into line with Pro- 
fessor King’s intensive studies on soil man- 
agement. In a very peculiar sense the art of 
soil management in distinction from soil sci- 
ence constitutes the theme of this work. Until 
recently, the Chinese, Japanese and Koreans 
were almost wholly without formal agricul- 
tural science in the western technical sense, 
while they have for centuries been adepts of 
unsurpassed skill in agricultural practise. The 
story of Professor King is not the less weighty 
because he has seemed to lean a little at times 
to the tide of Occidental opinion that has set 
rather strongly heretofore toward chemical 
analysis as the decisive mode of attack and 
source of guidance, and he can not be thought 
partial in setting forth the attainments of 
Oriental peoples who have worked in almost 
entire negligence of all resources but those of 
the farm, the home and the town. “ Farmers 
of Forty Centuries” is in effect a sketch of 
domestic methods of nursing crops. 
As Dr. Bailey intimates in a graceful pref- 
ace to the book, Dr. King has played well the 
rare part of “an agricultural traveler” and 
his results are quite on the high level of those 
other traveling experts who set forth natural 
features or social phenomena with expert 
touch. Professor King crossed Japan and 
touched eastern China on his inward trip, but 
his serious work only commenced when he 
reached the tropical border of south China 
and began to work northward with the advanc- 
ing season. This put him in the way of crit- 
ically following the modes of treatment in 
SCIENCE 
[N.S. Vou. XXXV. No. 889 
vogue just at the transition from the winter 
crops to the spring and early summer crops. 
These combined at once the maturing and the 
harvesting of the one and the fitting, the 
planting and the early culture of the other. 
Thus he advanced by stages—looping back for 
restudy midway—from the tropical border in 
Kwangtung and Kwangsi, into Chekiang and 
Kiangsu in the latitude of our southern states, 
later into Shantung and Chili in latitudes 
comparable to Kentucky and Illinois, and at 
length into Manchuria, whose climate is com- 
parable to that of our distinctly northern 
states. Passing through Korea, he was guided 
in a further study of Japan by details from the 
Japanese agricultural stations in which west- 
ern science has already joined hands with 
Oriental experience with the happiest results. 
King’s treatment is everywhere sympathetic 
and appreciative. He is singularly free from 
the Occidental provincialisms that mar so 
many stories of Oriental travel. He seems to 
have carried at all times the trained sense of 
the agriculturalist and of the student of fertili- 
zation, not the sniffing nose of the typical 
westerner. He seems in no wise to have been 
squeamish about inevitable organic odors, but 
yet was keen enough to note the singular 
searcity of flies and to draw the inference that 
it meant a vital order of cleanliness and car- 
ried a sanitary significance. In the universal 
use of hot tea-tinctured drinks he saw as other 
incisive travelers have done an important pro- 
tective custom. Nowhere does he lapse into 
grewsome pictures of putative decimations 
due to invited diseases. His tale is that of a 
fair-minded friendly visitor seeking to learn, 
and his story is in grateful contrast to the irk- 
some animadversions of the commonplace 
Occidental writer who plumes himself on 
looking down on Oriental customs “e superi- 
ore loco,” as Cesar would say. 
King’s statements are larded with quantita- 
tive data and carry a wealth of precise fact 
brought close home to the special cases of in- 
dividual farmers or particular practises. The 
smallness of the farms, the largeness of the 
product, the lavishness of the labor and a mul- 
titude of special items relative to specific 
