HORTICULTURAL JOURNAL. HI 
EMMONS' AGRICULTURE OF NEW YORK. 
One of our exchanges, the "Rural New Yorker," published at Rochester, 
in its issue of March 10th contains a favorable notice of the fifth volume of 
Dr. Emmons' Agriculture of New York. Whilst it admits the work to be 
"deficient in the detail of those facts most important for the farmer," it is 
pronounced "a creditable performance," "important," the "engravings 
and coloring worthy of great praise," the "volume creditable to the State 
wherever seen," and Dr. Fitch is said to be "probably at the head of the 
Entomologists of the Union." We are informed, also, that the Legislature 
has voted money to the State Agricultural Society, to enable this gentle- 
man to prosecute his researches on noxious insects. 
Considering that the work of Dr. Emmons is published under the patron- 
age of a great State, able and willing to encourage science, and which has 
already published many volumes which are magnificent monuments of science, 
(such as those of Hall, Torrey, Beck and Vanuxem,) we are sorry, that in a 
field which promised the finest and most original scientific and practical 
results, there should have been so tremendous a failure. 
Professor Emmons has occupied himself in Natural Science twenty-five or 
thirty-years, and he was Professor of Natural History in Williams College. 
This position implies some knowledge of Entomology. He was subsequently 
one of the State Geologists of New York ; and this, also, implies a know- 
ledge of fossil genera and species ; a knowledge which, Avhen acquired, may 
be applied to any branch of Natural History. How he managed to give 
currency to a belief in his Entomological talents, we do not know, and we 
are equally ignorant how any Naturalist should have produced so discredit- 
able a book, and how any agricultural editor, who should protect the public, 
could recommend such a scientific imposition. The book purports to con- 
tain descriptions of the more common and injurious species of insects ; are 
Cremastocheilus Hentzii, Cicindela haemorrhoidalis, Cupes capitata or 
Midas filatus, either common or injurious? 
Bad as the work is, it would have probably been much worse, but for Dr. 
Fitch, who is declared by our exchange to be at the head of the Entomolo- 
gists of the Union, upon whose labors a much greater portion of it is based 
than appears at first view. In 1848, Dr. Fitch was employed in the Ento- 
mological Department of the New York State Cabinet; and in 1849, his 
first catalogue of its contents was published ; and if we wonder why Dr. 
Emmons has "described" a number of species in some genera, Avhere one 
