he smaller farmers know the state of
their affairs only by the money they have in their hands at certain
seasons of the year. But, as better systems of husbandry spread, this lax
method of carrying on business must be discarded. Husbandry is becoming
more and more an experimental art. New trials must now be made, year after
year, by those who would hope to live and thrive; and it is only those who
keep regular accounts of the outlay upon each trial, and the income from
it, who can know what methods and manures they ought to adopt, and what to
reject from a system of profitable husbandry.

Upon this subject Mr Stephens is entirely of our opinion, and he gives
very copious examples of the way in which books ought to be kept.

* * * * *

Such is a hasty sketch of the contents of the book, in so far as the
farming part of it is concerned. The way in which the work is illustrated
by 608 woodcuts and 33 plates, by eminent artists, is as creditable to the
publishers as the matter of the book is to the author.

To the full and accurate descriptions of agricultural implements--to the
illustration of which many of these woodcuts and plates are devoted--we
feel ourselves wholly unable to do justice. That they are all from the pen
and pencil of Mr Slight, will, to those who know him, be a better
recommendation than any words of ours.

There is only one other test to which, in criticising the work before us,
we are entitled to put it. It contains much useful matter, but is it
likely, is it fitted, to answer the end which the author had in view? His
object, he says, was to put into the hands of young men desirous of
learning practical farming, a manual from which, _being upon a farm_, they
would be able to learn all that was necessary to fit them for the several
successive stations to which the industrious son even of a farm-labourer
may fairly hope to rise. This we think he has accomplished, and in that
graphic and living way which has all along led us into the persuasion that
Mr Stephens must himself have "played many parts," and entered into the
feeling and spirit of them all.

When he speaks of the shepherd and his dog, and of driving stock to
market, he seems to look back with much satisfaction, almost with regret,
to the time when he himself served as a drover, and took his cattle to the
South over the cold Northumbrian moors. He delights to linger by the way,
and tells you where you will sti