SeptembeI! 2, 19 04. J 



SCIENCE. 



313 



along the median line. Thorax with a broad, 

 brown, central stripe bordered with a rather 

 well-defined silvery, slightly broader, lateral 

 stripe containing a few brown blotches. 

 Pleura rather thickly clothed with patches of 

 silvery white scales. 



These species will be characterized more 

 fully in a Bulletin of the New York State 

 Museum soon to be issued. , 



E. P. Felt, 

 D. B. Young. 



NOTES ON SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC SCIENCE. 



AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS. 



Interest in agriculture, like that in com- 

 merce and industry, tends more and more to 

 take upon itself an international character. 

 The correlation of international experience and 

 the comparison of experiments, tendencies and 

 economic conditions is one of the most fruitful 

 fields of research, not only to the economist, 

 but equally so to the technical agriculturist 

 and to the practical farmer. Consumers gen- 

 erally are interested to the extent to which 

 prices are affected by the favorable or unfavor- 

 able harvests in any particular country or 

 group of countries. Any coimtry whose sys- 

 tem of production or distribution remains too 

 far behind in the progress of scientific and 

 practical economics must sooner or later lose 

 its capacity to compete in the world market. 

 The same is true of any particular crop, unless 

 it be favored by special natural advantages. 

 Just at this time much attention is being 

 given to the study of the comparative strength 

 of nations and the leading national systems of 

 productive eificiency. It is hoped, therefore, 

 that the following more or less specific ac- 

 counts of agricultural conditions in the sev- 

 eral countries represented may be deemed of 

 timely interest and value. 



SCIENTIFIC AGRICULTURE IN JAPAN. 



A RECENTLY returned writer from the far 

 east calls attention to the fact which students 

 of oriental civilizations have so long over- 

 looked, namely, the extent to which the Japa- 

 nese especially have accepted the truth that 

 the natural sciences lie at the basis of the ma- 

 terial development of nations. In its own 



way Japanese husbandry seems to have 

 worked out much that the experiment station 

 has accomplished in the west. This writer 

 (Mr. Harold Bolce, in Booklover's Magazine) 

 calls the Japanese, with their 19,000 square 

 miles of arable land, the most remarkable agri- 

 cultural nation the world has known. " If all 

 the tillable acres of Japan were merged into 

 oue field," he says, " a man in an automobile, 

 traveling at the rate of fifty miles an hour, 

 could skirt the entire perimeter of arable 

 Japan in eleven hours. Upon this narrow free- 

 hold Japan has reared a nation of imperial 

 power, which is determined to enjoy com- 

 mercial preeminence over the world of wealth 

 and opportunity from Siberia to Siam, and 

 already, by force of arms, is driving from the 

 shores of Asia the greatest monarchy of 

 Europe. 



" The secret of the success of the little Day- 

 break Kingdom has been a mystery to many 

 students of nations. Patriotism does not ex- 

 plain the riddle of its strength, neither can 

 commerce, nor military equipment nor manu- 

 facturing skill. Western nations will fail 

 fully to grasp the secret of the dynamic in- 

 tensity of Japan to-day, and will dangerously 

 underestimate the formidable possibilities of 

 the Greater Japan (the Dai Nippon) of to- 

 morrow, until they begin to study seriously 

 the agricultural triumphs of that empire. For 

 Japan, more scientifically than any other 

 nation, past or present, has perfected the art 

 of sending the roots of its civilization endur- 

 ingly into the soil. 



" Progressive experts of high authority 

 throughout the orient noyv admit that in all 

 the annals of agriculture there is nothing that 

 ever approached the scientific skill of Sun- 

 rise husbandry. Patient diligence, with knowl- 

 edge of the chemistry of soil and the physiol- 

 ogy of plants, have yielded results that have 

 astounded the most advanced agriculturists 

 in western nations." 



CHANGES IN BRITISH AGRICULTURAL POLICY. 



The progress of scientific agriculture in 

 England increasingly takes the form of as- 

 sistance in efi^ecting the adaptation of the in- 

 dustry to such crops as do not compete with 



