858 
Publications of Interest to Agriculturists. 
East ; thus leaving no excuse for that amazing ignorance of India 
now so painfully prevalent among influential party politicians of the 
familiar advertising sort, which, even more than the demoralisation 
of political principles and the degradation of manners everywhere 
introduced by them into public life, is one of the signs of the times, 
ominous of the inveteracy of the decline and coming downfall of 
the old manufacturing and mercantile supremacy of the United 
Kingdom. 
Nothing could be more admirable than the manner in which Dr. 
Voelcker has produced his Report. The body of it is divided into 
20 chapters, extending over 410 closely, but clearly printed, tall 
8 vo pages. Each chapter is devoted to a special subject, the divisions 
of each subject being marginally noted, and his conclusions and 
recommendations on each subject consecutively treated being given 
in wider-spaced, specially headed, paragraphs at the end of its chapter. 
Besides the table of contents, outlines of chapters, and maps, the 
Report is preceded by an abstract of the same, chapter by chapter, of 
nineteen pages, and is succeeded by appendices consisting of fourteen 
analyses of soils, dungs, waters, oil-cake refuse, fodder, &c., and a diary 
of Dr. Yoelcker’s three tours in India between December 10, 1889, 
and January 10, 1891. The whole is concluded with a full index, 
in which I have failed to detect a single clerical or typographical 
error. It is one of the most thoroughly schemed and executed official 
reports I ever had in my hands, its scope and purport being appre- 
hended at, as it were, a glance ; while, as a closer inspection proves, 
not a particular of any pertinence has been overlooked, and yeax-s of 
study would not exhaust the value of its lucidly and logically 
marshalled facts, or the interest of its vivid actuality. 
The subjects treated in the Report are, the histoi-y of the Indian 
Agricultural Departments, the possibility of improving Indian 
agricultui’e, the Indian cultivator, climate, soil, water, manure, 
the Indian foi’ests and fuel and wood reserves, grass, fodder crops 
and hedges, live stock and dairying, implements, ci’ops and cultiva- 
tion, agricultural industi'ies and exports, economical and political 
conditions, practical agricultural inquiry, scientific agricultural 
inquiry, experimental farms, agricultural education, and the future 
organisation of the Indian Agricultural Depai’tments. It is im- 
possible to here follow Dr. Voelcker’s “conclusions” and “recom- 
mendations ” under these twenty headings, but they ai’e all generalised 
in his second chapter 1 , “ On the Possibility of Improving Indian 
Agriculture,” wherein he states that the diversities met with in 
India, alike in its physicial features, the people themselves, and their 
varying surroundings of life, altogether prevent one from speaking 
generally on the condition of their agriculture ; that the problem 
of its improvement thus being an exceedingly difficult one, requires 
to be dealt with in the most circumspect, tentative, experimental, 
and patient manner ; that, as a whole, the agriculture of India is 
not backward, as many ignorantly pretend ; that in many parts there 
is little or nothing that can be improved in it, so completely have its 
Aryan cultivators adapted themselves to the soil which has been 
