Abstract
THIS Year-Book is in many respects a unique publication. Consisting of a bound volume of more than six hundred pages, published annually at Government expense in an edition of half a million copies, and for free distribution, it is a standing testimony to the encouragement given to scientific agriculture in the United States. The first part of the volume contains a brief general report on the operations of the Department of Agriculture, but this only occupies fifty pages, the remaining portion being taken up with papers, by agricultural experts, discussing the result of investigations in agricultural science and farm practice. In imparting this information, technical language is avoided, so far as possible, in order that the papers may be easily under stood by the class for whose interests they have been prepared. Among the subjects dealt with are: the extermination of noxious insects by bounties, the use of steam apparatus for spraying, influence of environment in the origination of plant varieties, potash and its function in agriculture, irrigation on the great plains, insect control in California, diseases of shade and ornamental trees, migration of weeds, agriculture education and research in Belgium, olive culture in the United States, and ambrosia beetles. Several of these papers have already been noticed in NATURE, having been received in the form of excerpts from the present volume.
Year-Book of the United States Department of Agriculture for 1896.
Pp. 686. (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1897.)
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Year-Book of the United States Department of Agriculture for 1896. Nature 56, 587 (1897). https://doi.org/10.1038/056587d0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/056587d0