Abstract
THE Imperial Instate of Entomology has done good service in issuing “A Review of the Literature on Soil Insecticides” (Imperial Institute of Entomology, 41 Queen's Gate, London, S.W.7. 10s.). Since the subject is one of wide interest and economic importance, it is a great advantage to have so much scattered information brought together under one cover. The work took its origin at a Conference on Insecticides and Fungicides of the Agricultural Research Council, which decided to ask Dr. H. C. Gough to prepare the review now before us. The period covered by this work begins in 1914 and ends, except for a few references, in 1940 ; owing to war conditions, its publication at an earlier date was impracticable. In order to ensure as wide a circulation as possible, the Agricultural Research Council delegated the publication of the review to the Imperial Institute of Entomology. The subject-matter of the review is extremely well arranged under the chemicals employed. The most important of these are grouped together and arranged alphabetically. The remaining substances, also arranged alphabetically, follow; but they proved difficult to classify owing to their being often referred to by different authors under different names. Many foreign names also proved difficult to translate owing to their often having different significance in different languages. A perusal of the 150 or more pages of this work shows how contradictory so many of the results obtained by different authors have been for almost all the substances tested. It is, therefore, impossible to draw any but very limited conclusions. This in itself is a cogent argument for renewed and carefully controlled experiments. Also the need for a full analysis of the diverse factors likely to influence the results of experiments has to be constantly borne in mind. A very fair indication of the extent of the subject of soil insecticides is given by the bibliography at the end of this review, in which more than 650 works are listed.
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Literature on Soil Insecticides. Nature 158, 53 (1946). https://doi.org/10.1038/158053c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/158053c0