nautical surveys, and lighthouse boards, with all their attendant scientific researches, and magnetic observations, and voyages of discovery all sprung up—­at once the causes and the consequences of the advancement of his art towards perfection; and latest, though yet far from being the last, all the new knowledge that belongs to steam-navigation has been incorporated in the vast body of nautical science. The further an art advances, the more necessary does science become to it.

Thus it is with agriculture.  It cannot be denied that the tillage of the soil, with almost every other branch of husbandry, has made large strides among us—­that we have more productive and better cultivated provinces, and more skilful farmers, than are to be found in any other part of the world in which equal disadvantages of climate prevail.  Any one will readily satisfy himself of this, who, with an agricultural eye, shall visit the other parts of Europe to which the same northern sky is common with ourselves.  And it is because we have reached this pitch of improvement—­at which many think we ought to be content to stop—­because we have dismissed our frail and diminutive boats, and sail now in majestic and decorated ships, provided with such abundant stores that we need not, night by night, to seek the harbour for new supplies—­that we begin to feel the want of some directing principle—­to look about for some favouring star to guide our wanderings upon the deep.  To the tremblirg needle of science we must now turn to point our way.  Feeble and uncertain it may itself appear—­wavering as it directs us—­and therefore by many may be depreciated and despised—­yet it will surely lead us right if we have faith in its indications.  Let the practical man then build his ships skilfully and well after the best models, and of the soundest oak—­let their timbers be Kyanized, their cables of iron, their cordage and sails of the most approved make and material—­let their sailors be true men and fearless, and let stores be providently laid in for the voyage; but let not the trembling needle of science be forgotten; for though the distant harbour he would gain be well known to him—­without the aid of the needle he may never be able to reach it.

In thus rigging out his ship—­in other words, in fitting up his farm and doing all for it, and upon it, which experience and skilful practice can suggest—­he cannot have a better guide than the book now before us.

The book of the farm is not a mere didactic treatise on practical agriculture, of which we already possess several of deserved reputation; nor yet a laborious compilation, systematically arranged, of every thing which, in the opinion of the author, it should interest the farmer to know.  Of such Cyclopaedias, that of Loudon will not soon find a rival.  But, as its name implies, The Book of the Farm contains a detail of all the operations, the more minute as well as the greater, which the