REVIEWS 



Cocoa I by | Dr. C. J. J. van Hall j director of the Institute for Plant- 

 Diseases and Cultures, | Buitenzorg, Java | with illustrations and 

 map I Macmillan and Co., Limited ] St. Martin's Street, London | 

 1914 I Cloth, pp. i-xvi + 1-515. 



The Coco-nut | by | Edwin Bingham Copeland | professor of plant phys- 

 iology and dean of the | College of Agriculture, University of | the 

 Philippines | Macmillan and Co., Limited j St. Martin's Street, 

 London ! 1914 \ Cloth, pp. i-xiv + 1-212. 



The literature of tropical agriculture has been notably en- 

 riched by the appearance of these two new works. The devel- 

 opment of tropical agriculture during the past twenty-five years 

 has presented many interesting and noteworthy features. It has 

 differed markedly from the development of temperate-region 

 agriculture, and it has been able to borrow comparatively little 

 from the latter. Many of its crops are entirely peculiar to the 

 tropics, and tropical conditions furnish a series of wholly unique 

 problems. Tropical planters have had to feel their way by pain- 

 ful steps, gradually gaining the local experience necessary for 

 successful, practical operations. Even this kind of develop- 

 ment has been far more rapid than in the case of temperate 

 region agriculture, largely due to the fact that tropical agri- 

 culture has been characterized by the investment of large capital. 

 The capital invested gradually drew to its service well-trained 

 technical men from the temperate countries. In late years the 

 establishment in colonial possessions of active agricultural ex- 

 perimental stations has given a great impetus to the development 

 of the technical side of tropical agriculture. Much of the early 

 literature of tropical agriculture consisted of accounts of the 

 personal experiences in tropical planting of untrained men, some 

 of whom, however, in the school of hard experience finally became 

 very successful planters. Until within the last decade really 

 high-grade technical works on tropical agriculture were very few, 

 and even yet works like Semler's Tropische Agrikultur and War- 

 burg's Die Muskatnuss remain very rare. 



There is the same difference between the mass of the earlier 

 literature and these later works as exists between a farm school 

 and a college of agriculture. The methods of the farm school 



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