August i, 1887,] THE TROPICAL 
the stables from eleven to five and given a supplement 
of hay, &e. 
Artificial butter, no matter under what name it 
may be called, is not iu favor with the French 
hygienic commissioners. Iu ithis attitude of suspicion 
they are surpassed by the police authorities of Berlin. 
Iu Paris extreme rigor is exercised towards the vendors 
of Simili-butter. Its name must be specially labelled 
on the shop ensign and stamped into the stuff itself. 
It is not that the material if carefully prepared be 
not good for cooking and pastry purposes ; but unfortun- 
ately the belief is general, that all kinds of grease 
are employed to make the artificial butter that from 
horses &c, as well as oxen, not even excludiug the 
fat of diseased animals. If the fats were subjected 
to a high temperature, contagious disease-germs would 
be destroyed ; but this is not so, as that would eliminate 
the power of the grease to take the butter, the 
" meadow " aroma aud which no chemical doctoring 
can communicate. It is curious nearly all the fat of the 
abattoirs of this city is sent to Holland to be made 
into Simili-butter which is then exported to Paris. 
THE AGRICULTURAL PESTS OF INDIA. 
The Agricultural Pests of India and of Eastern and 
Southern Asia: Vegetable and Animal, injurious to 
Man and, his Products. By Surgeon-General E Iward 
Balfour, author of of " The Cyclopaedia of India," 
&c. (London : Bernard Quariteh, 1887.; 
Considerable attention has been directed lately to 
agricultural pests of all kinds, and especially to in- 
sect pests, in various countries, because the injuries 
occasioned to crops by their agency havo greatly 
increased, and iu some instances altogether new dis- 
orders and diseases attributable to them have appeared. 
The universal international exchange of agricultural 
produce and other commodities has tended and must 
tend to distribute insects, fungi, and other sources 
of evil to mankind, animals, and plants, throughout 
the world. Thus the terrible scourge cf the vine, 
the Pliylloxtia vastatrix, Was first introduced into 
the French vineyards with plants, or cut tings, of vines 
imported from the United States. Very many insects 
most noxious to agricultural, fruit, and garden crops, 
in the United States were brought there with plants, 
cuttings, fruits, and seeds. The elm-leaf beetle, 
(ml mica xantllontela'ma, which is now seriously dam- 
aging elm-trees, was not known in the United 
States until 1837, and came probably from France, 
or Germany, where it had been a troublesome pest 
long before that date. The hop By, tphis hiimuli, 
called the "barometer of poverty" by a Kentish 
historian of hop culture, has only recently visited 
the hop plantations of America: yet it caused al- 
most a fatal blight last year in those of the Kastern 
States, upon an area of nearly 10,000 acres. 'With- 
out any doubt this insect was conveyed from Eng- 
land iu "hop-sets.'' The Hessian fly has been convey- 
ed to Great Britain by some meaus or other not 
yet discovered during the last year, and bids Fair 
to bo a dangerous and permanent scourge to the 
Wheat and oat crops of this country- 
It is the same with moulds, or mildews, or '• blights," 
Occasioned by fungi. The vine mildew, Oidium 
tuckerii, was not dreamed of in France until 1S45. 
The potato mould, Voronospora infestans, had shown 
no important sign in Great Britain until 184-1. The 
cotfee mildew, Henrileia vastatrix, did no serious 
harm in the coffee plantations of Ceylon until after 
but during the last ten years it has enor- 
mously decreased their yield. 
Diseases of animals have also been greatly inten- 
sified during the past thirty years in Great Britain 
and in other countries. In India, as we gather from 
this little book of Surgeon-General Balfour, anthrax, 
pleuropneumonia, rinderpest, foot-and-mouth disease, 
are so rampant that the Madras Government has 
recently appointed an inspector of cattle diseases 
with a sufficient staff under him 
There is no doubt that the attacks of certain in- 
sects and parasitic fungi aro more frequent and 
uioru fatal tliiiu formerly. Hop blights from aphides 
AGRICULTURIST, 
and mildew, Spu-rotheca caslat/nd, are far more com- 
mon and destructive in England than they were 
fifty years back; and the orange-growers of Florida, 
California, and other places where oranges are cult- 
ivated, are at their wits' end to combat the ravages 
of scale insects, GJoccidse, which have greately in- 
creased since 1870. 
It is a moot point as to whether this is due, or 
not, to modern and more artificial systems of cultiv- 
ation, which may be more favourable to the spread 
of insects and parasitic fungi. Or it may be that 
these new systems interfere with the balance of 
Nature by decreasing parasitic and other insects, and 
birds and other animals, which are the natural foes 
of injurious insects. It has been discovered by Prof. 
Forbes of Illinois, that several species of the Cara- 
bidse and Coccinellidie eat the spores of fungi ; 
therefore an unusual increase in the number of birds, 
or other foes of these insects, might occasion a 
serious spread of mildews. 
The importance of the subject of agricultural pests 
cannot be overrated. It is now fully recognized by 
the Government of the United States, who have a 
distinguished entomologist upon the staff of the 
National Agricultural Department. Besides this, many 
of the States have their own entomologists, who 
furnish frequent aud valuable reports and advice as 
to methods of treatment. In England the Aricul- 
tural Department of the Privy Council have lately 
issued a series of reports upon insects injurious to 
crops, written by Mr. Charles Whitehead; and Miss 
Ormerod, the eutomologist of the Royal Agricultural 
Society, has published annual reports for upwards 
of ten years, which have been of the utmost value 
and practical benefit to agriculturists. And in India, 
as Surgeon-General Balfour tells us in this work, 
the serious injuries caused by insects and other 
animals, fungi, and bacilli, to mankind, animals, and 
plants, have at last attracted the attention of the 
Government of India, and it is proposed to invite 
communication from those eugaced in agriculture, 
forestry, and horticulture in that country, to furnish 
matter for periodical reports like those issued from 
time to time by Miss Ormerod. These would of 
course be published in the vernacular, and should 
be illustrated by woodcuts, as Miss Ormerod sug- 
gests iu her comprehensive letter in the preface 
of "Agricultural Pests of India." It is much to be 
hoped that a competent entomologist may be appoint- 
ed in India to direct this work. 
Surgeon-General Balfour, so far hick as 18S0, re- 
commended the Secretary of State for Iudia to ob- 
tain reports on the diseases of cattle and plants, and 
on creatures noxious to mankind aud vegetation. In 
his admirable "Oyclop;edia of India and of Eastern 
and Southern Asia," published in 1885, he gave a 
general view of the entomology of these regions, and 
described the losses sustained by agriculturists from 
these aud similar causes. He has followed this up 
with the work now under review. 
Though a small book, the " Agricultural Pests of 
India" is very ambitious in design, as it treats not 
only of insects and fungi and animals injurious to 
mankind aud agricultural crop?, but of all manner 
of birds, beasts, and fishes. Several of these cannot, 
even by the greatest stretch of the imagination, 
be classified as pests to agriculture, aud seem to be 
altogether out of place iu this category. Under the 
heading " Fish," sharks and siluroids are described, 
though it is not by any means clear in what way 
they are agricultural pests, except, perhaps, that 
they might bite off limbs of unwary agriculturists 
disporting in the sea. The book should have been 
styled the " Natural History of India," or "A Manual 
of the Natural History of India," rather than the 
" Agricultural Pests of India." But the fact that 
rather too many subjects are dealt with eauuot be 
held to be a very serious fault in a compilation 
containing an immense amount of survice&ble inform- 
ation arranged alphabetically, together with a good 
index, SO that any head can be quickly found. Tho 
author had great opportunities of acquiring knowledge 
of the branches of uuturul history he haa hero dis- 
