November 2, 1917] 



SCIENCE 



439 



the book contains at least brief descriptions of 

 practically all patents bearing on the subject 

 during the period covered by the book, and the 

 information regarding progress in Germany 

 during the war is probably fuller than has else- 

 where appeared. 



The book contains a full author and subject 

 index, which is particularly valuable, since it 

 includes references both to the original fourth 

 edition and to the supplement. 



Jas. Lewis Howe 

 "Washington and Lee University 



an encyclopedia of peaches 

 The Peaches of New York. By TJ. P. Hed- 

 RiCK, assisted by G. H. Howe, O. M. Taylor 

 and C. B. Tubergex. New York Agricul- 

 tural Experiment Station, Geneva, 1917. 

 Two comparisons come easily to mind on 

 opening Professor Hedrick's " Peaches of New 

 York." The first is with Poiteau's " Pomo- 

 logie Frangaise " ; the second is with Professor 

 Beach's " Apples of New York." 



The beauty of the ripened fruit has always 

 appealed to persons of literary taste and es- 

 thetic sensibility, and such persons have often 

 wished to make permanent record of the de- 

 lights of their gardens and orchards. There 

 have been many notable books, covering more 

 than a century of time, extra-illustrated with 

 colored plates of fruits. The " Pomologie 

 Prangaise " may be mentioned as one of the 

 best early examples of such work. 



It might not be much to expect that the 

 " Peaches of New York " would excel any 

 book of a hundred years ago, and yet this 

 standard has been so rarely reached that it is a 

 compliment to say that any one anywhere ap- 

 proaches it. This new book, however, sur- 

 passes the old in two fundamental particulars, 

 in the excellence of its plates and in the scien- 

 tific assemblage of taxonomic data. 



Professor Beach's " Apples of New York " 

 comes into the comparison as being the great 

 beginning of this notable series, which now 

 includes the " Grapes of New York,' ' " Plums 

 of New York," and " Cherries of New York." 

 It will be seen that the technical processes of 

 color-photography and printing as applied to 



this line of work have been greatly improved, 

 even in these last few years, for though the 

 photographing of peaches is much more diffi- 

 cult than the photographing of apples, the color 

 plates of the present volume are emphatically 

 superior. And this point will bear some em- 

 phasis, considering how important such plates 

 are as a means of description, and considering 

 that the accurate description of varieties is 

 exactly the main objective of the series. 



One must see, too, that the science of syste- 

 matic pomology has made great progress since 

 the days of Poiteau and Turpin. There have 

 been catalogues of varieties with descriptions 

 and lists of synonyms of course for nearly 200 

 years, but as a matter of fact the science of 

 systematic pomology is practically a develop- 

 ment of the last dozen years. It is, moreover, 

 as yet almost an exclusively American science, 

 having been developed largely by the critical 

 pomological workers in the experiment sta- 

 tions and the United States Department of 

 Agriculture. Professor Hedrick, with his 

 quite unusual facilities and his corps of 

 trained assistants, has been able to bring these 

 modern methods of systematic study to a high 

 degree of perfection. It is not too much to 

 say that, in breadth of view, bibliographic com- 

 prehensiveness, and critical examination of de- 

 tail it would be hard to find better work any- 

 where in the older fields of taxonomic science. 



Emphasis is placed upon the systematic or 

 encyclopedic features of the work, for these are 

 certainly the most important. There are 

 dozens of books and hundreds of bulletins 

 where the reader can more easily find a dis- 

 cussion of how to grow peaches, but the pres- 

 ent work will long be the first reference for all 

 those who want the last word on the descrip- 

 tion or nomenclature of varieties. 



The title is of course a brazen misnomer. 

 The book is not limited to the peaches of New 

 York, and probably was never intended to 

 cover any such narrow view. It is a book for 

 the whole United States and the peach-grow- 

 ing portions of Canada. In fact one might 

 better call it "Peaches of the World," for it 

 will doubtless be consulted as widely as Poi- 

 teau's fine old book written over seventy years 



