22 DECEMBER 1894, Page 23

Agricultural Zoology. By Dr. J. Ritzetna Boa. (Chapman and Hall.)—Dr.

Boa's book has been translated by Mr. Ainsworth Davis, and has an introduction by Miss Ormerod. That it is interesting we may assure all concerned in agriculture. The method of arranging the animals and birds with a note on their relations to agriculture is as clear as we could wish for, and there are some hundred and fifty illustrations. We have a doubt whether the class most in need of instruction will have the education to profit by it. A. farmer, it is true, gets in time to know what a wireworm looks like, and experience teaches him what he refuses to learn from others. The process is lengthy and not always accurate. But learn from books he will not,—the average farmer with a large farm certainly will not, even when he has had the advantage of a. modern education. He has not, he says, the time or the patience for repeated ploughings or dressings, or whatever is recommended. He is naturally some- what of a fatalist ; indeed, if he wore not something of a philosopher, he would be as short-lived as a publican.