close of the agricultural year, when the crops are reaped and housed,
and the long winter invites to new and peculiar, and, as they may be
called, preparatory labours, the reader is taught what work in each
succeeding month and season should be undertaken--why at that season
for what purpose it is to be done-in what way it can best be
performed--how at the least cost of money and the smallest waste of
time--and _how the master may at all times ascertain if his work has
been efficiently performed_.

We confess that we have been much struck with the wide range of
_practical_ subjects on which the author gives, in such a way a to
show that he is himself familiar with them, the most minute
directions for the guidance at once of the master farmer himself,
and for the direction of those who are under his orders. We have
satisfied ourselves that by carefully _examining_ the contents of
this one book, we should be prepared not merely to pass an
examination, but actually to undertake the office of public examiner
in any or all of the several crafts and mysteries of the farm-builder,
the weather-seer, the hedge-planter, the ditcher, the drainer, the
ploughman, the cattle-feeder, the stock-buyer, the drover, the
pig-killer, the fat cattle seller, the butcher, the miller, and the
grieve or general overseer of the farm. We know not what other
gentle crafts the still unpublished parts of the work may hereafter
teach us; but so faithfully and so minutely, in general so clearly,
and with so much apparent enjoyment, does the author enter into the
details of all the above lines of life, that we have been deceived
(we suppose) into the persuasion that Mr. Stephens must, in his
lifetime, have "played many parts"--that he has himself, as occasion
offered, or as work fell in his way, engaged in every one of these
as well as of the other varied occupations it falls in his way to