ved piece of land, without a farm-stead or
farm-house, with few hedge-rows, and wholly undrained. On entering
the farm, also, he has servants to engage, stock to buy, and
implements to select. In all these difflculties, _The Book of the
Farm_ comes to his aid. The most useful, approved, and economical
form of a farm-steading is pointed out. The structure of barns,
stables, cow-houses, piggeries, _liquid-manure tanks_, poultry-yards,
and every other appendage of the farm-house, and, finally, the most
fitting construction of the farm-house itself, according to the size
and situation of the farm, are discussed, described, and explained.
Plans and estimates of every expense are added, and woodcuts
illustrative of every less known suggestion. These are not only
sufficient to guide the intelligent young farmer in all the
preliminary arrangements for his future comfort and success, but will,
we are sure, supply hints to many older heads for the reconstruction
or improvement of farm-steadings, heretofore deemed convenient and
complete. The following chapter aids him in the choice of his
servants, and describes distinctly the duties and province of each.

And now, having concluded his domestic arrangements, [3] he must
learn to know something of the weather which prevails in the
district in which he has settled, before he can properly plan out or
direct the execution of the various labours which are to be
undertaken upon his farm during the winter. A chapter of some length,
therefore, is devoted to the "weather in winter," in which the
principles by which the weather is regulated in the different parts
of our islands, and the methods of foreseeing or predicting changes,
are described and illustrated _as far as they are known_. This is the
first of those chapters of _The Book of the Farm_ which illustrates
in a way not to be mistaken, the truth announced at the head of this
article, that _skilful practice is applied science_.

[Footnote 3: Hesiod considered one other appendage to the homestead
indispensable, to which Mr. Stephens does not allude, perhaps from
feeling himself incompetent to advise.]

To some it may appear at first sight that our author has indulged in
too much detail upon this subject; but he is not a true practical
farmer who says so. The weather has always been a most interesting
subject to the agriculturist--he is every day, in nearly all his
movements, dependant upon it. A week of rain, or of extraordinary