PUBLICATIONS OF INTEREST TO 
AGRICULTURISTS. 
Of the three works which are here noticed two are French publica- 
tions, and the third is an official brochure issued by the United 
States Department of Agriculture. 
They are reviewed in the following order : — 
1. The Disorders of Apple and Pear Trees. 
2. Analyses of American Feeding-stuffs. 
3. Natural History of Animals of the Farm. 
THE DISORDERS OF APPLE AND PEAR TREES. 1 
M. Dangeard’s brochure is an addition of considerable importance 
to the knowledge of the affections of apple and pear trees, and par- 
ticularly of those caused by fungi, whose harmful influences are fre- 
quently most serious, and often unsuspected by cultivators, or 
attributed by them to unkindly and unsuitable conditions of soil 
or subsoil, or to the effect of weather. To the attacks of insects 
upon fruit-trees a short chapter only is devoted, which is, and pur- 
poses to be, merely a summary of information obtained from various 
authorities upon those which are most destructive, and of methods of 
prevention, and remedies against them. M. Dangeard gives a list of 
insecticides that have been found useful against some of the insects 
injurious to apple and pear crops, such as the weevil, Anthonomus 
pomorum, and the winter moth, Cheimatobia brumata. 
In the fore-front of this list he places arsenical compounds, as 
Paris Green and London Purple, at least for those insects which 
actually eat the leaves or the flowers, such as caterpillars and the 
larvae of beetles, and would be killed by the poison upon them ; 
while for insects which suck up the juices — as aphides, for example, 
and the apple sucker, Psylla mali — a composition of soft soap 
and petroleum should be employed. This is supposed by M. Dan- 
geard to act as a poison upon the bodies of insects, but it is ques- 
tioned whether it does not rather starve them out, and prevent them 
from feeding, by its unpleasant odour, fixed as it is upon the bodies 
of the insects and the leaves upon which they are placed. At least 
this is the effect of syringing with soft soap and quassia concoctions 
upon the aphides of the hop plants. Arsenites, it appears, are not 
made use of as insecticides in France, and M. Dangeard advises that 
they should be employed as in the United States, adding that there 
is a new field open for careful experiments upon these powerful 
insecticides, and that it seems more simple and less costly to spray 
1 Les Maladies du Pnmmier et du Poirier , par P. A. Dangeard, Maftre 
de Conferences de Botanique A la Faculty de Poitiers. Pp. 80, with 10 plates 
of many figures. Paper covers. Paris : J. B. Baillitre, 1892. 8 francs. 
