The work, I trust, may be consulted with as much advantage by the country gentleman, unacquainted with practical agriculture, as by the pupil; and I have endeavoured to explain my reasons for thinking so, by pointing out the particular evils which inevitably arise from inacquaintance with rural affairs by the proprietors of the soil. This First portion I have designated INITIATION, because it indicates the sort of discipline which the agricultural pupil should voluntarily undergo, before his mind can become fitted to master the details of practical agriculture. The Second Division explains the details, even to the most minute particular, of every farm-operation, from one end of the year to the other; and as the treatment of each is materially affected by the particular season in which it is undertaken, great care has been taken to treat of each in the manner peculiar to the season in which it is conducted. The seasons having a predominating influence over farmoperations, all the operations are necessarily classed under their respective seasons. The Winter commences the operations of the farm, when most of the preparations for the succeeding busy seasons are made. Upon the foundation laid in Winter, the Spring consigns every variety of seed used in husbandry to the ground, and witnesses the reproduction of every species of live stock. The Summer fosters the growth both of plants and animals. The Autumn reaps the fruits of all the labour that has been bestowed in the preceding seasons. To render the explanations of the operations more particular and explicit throughout the seasons, I have found it necessary, by way of practical example, to assume the working of one of the sorts of farming for twelve months; and have selected that which embraces the greatest variety of particulars-the Mixed Husbandry, which has for its subjects not only the cultivation of the plants raised in the field, but also the breeding, rearing, and fattening of live stock. This part necessarily occupies a large portion of the work, and is appropriately designated PRACTICE.

In the Third Division, the agricultural pupil is regarded no longer as a mere student, but as a young farmer on the look-out for a farm. To assist him in this object, he is made acquainted with the best and worst physical conditions in which a farm can be placed, in the different sorts of farming, as regards variety of ground and locality. He is next shown the manner of judging of land; of computing its rent; of negotiating the covenants of a lease; of stocking the farm which was chosen as an example for his guidance; and of arbitrating on minor subjects with his predecessor before he leaves the farm.

This extent of instruction is quite sufficient for the young farmer in ordinary cases, where the farm is complete, and its farming has been long settled. Where the farm is incomplete, he may further require information on subjects that might never have been presented to his notice in the course of his stay on the educational farm, but which it is incumbent on him to know before he can become a thoroughly good farmer. The farm he is about to enter may require a new steading the young tenant should become acquainted with plans, specifications, and expenses of buildings. To assist him, I have given these, based upon such principles as are applicable to all sizes of steadings, and all modes of farming. The ground may require enclosure :-he should know the principles upon which fields should be planned for convenience of work, and the method of constructing fences, whether of thorn or of stone. The land may require draining he ought to become acquainted with the principles upon which drainage depends, so far as these have been ascertained, and the method of applying them practically. There may be waste land to bring in :-its treatment, whether by trenching with the spade, or trenching and subsoiling after drainage with the plough, should be familiarised to him. The embankment of land against, and irrigating it with water may be requisite in some localities:-he ought to know the best method of effecting both. On all these subjects I have endeavoured to afford the young farmer the best intrinsic information in an easy shape for reference, and not clouded with unnecessary technicalities.

After the treatment of those important and fundamental topics, which have reference alone to the soil, the principles upon which the purity of blood and the symmetrical form of animals are secured and maintained, are then explained. The points of animals which illustrate those principles are fully indicated, and the portraits of some which possessed these in an eminent degree embellish the work. No farmer can understand the position of his affairs without keeping accurate accounts, so that a system of book-keeping must be of service to him, and the simple one I have given possesses the advantage of having been found practically useful. With a few precepts for the guidance of the young farmer, at the outset of life, in his conduct towards his dependents and equals, as well as his superiors, I conclude my task. These, I trust, will be accepted, or at least perused, in the same good spirit with which they are offered; my object being to inculcate that unity of feeling among agriculturists of every class, without which no pursuit can prosper, and

which is not only a social but a sacred duty, seeing that our dependence lies with Him who holds the elements in His hands. Because the wishes of the young farmer are realised, more or less, by one and all of these means, I have designated this part REALISATION.

It may be proper for me to state, in a few words, the opportunities I have had of acquiring such an extent of knowledge in the various departments of practical agriculture, and the other subjects enumerated above, as to warrant me in assuming the part of monitor to the agricultural student. The following short narrative, I trust, may be sufficient to satisfy the reasonable inquirer.

After receiving what is commonly called a liberal education at the Parochial and Grammar Schools of Dundee, at the Academy there, under Mr Duncan, the Rector, now Professor of mathematics in St Salvador's College, St Andrews, and at the College of Edinburgh, I boarded myself with Mr George Brown, of Whitsome Hill, a farm in Berwickshire, of about 600 acres, with the view of learning agriculture. Mr Brown was universally esteemed one of the best farmers of that well-farmed county; and so high an opinion did the late Mr Robertson of Ladykirk, the most celebrated breeder of short-horns in Scotland of his day, entertain of his farming, both in stock and crop, that he gave him permission to send his cows to the bulls at Ladykirk—a singular favour which he extended, I believe, to no one else, with the exception of his old tenant and intimate friend, Mr Heriot of Fellowhills. I remained three years at Whitsome Hill, during the first two of which I laboured with my own hands at every species of work which the ploughman, the field-worker, and the shepherd must perform in the field, or the steward and the cattle-man at the steading: and even in the dairy and poultry house part of my time was spent. All this labour I undertook, not of necessity, but voluntarily and with cheerfulness, in the determination of acquiring a thoroughly practical knowledge of my profession. In my third year, when there happened to be no steward, Mr Brown permitted me to manage the farm under his own immediate superintendance.

I then travelled for nearly a twelvemonth, soon after peace was restored, through most of the countries of Europe, and in many places I happened to be the first Briton who had visited them since the outbreak of the Revolutionary war. This excursion gave me considerable insight into the methods of Continental farming.

Shortly after my return home, I took possession of a small farm on

Balmadies in Forfarshire, consisting of 300 acres. It was in such a state of dilapidation as to present an excellent subject for improvement. It had no farm-house-only the remains of a steading; the fields were nine-and-twenty in number, very irregular in shape, and fenced with broken down stone dykes and clumsy layers of boulders and turf; a rivulet every year inundated parts of the best land; the farm-roads were in a wretched condition; and above forty acres of waste land were covered with whins and broom. The heaviest description of soil was hazel loam, some of it deep, some shallow, and all resting on retentive clay; and the lightest kind was gravelly, resting on gravel. The farm contained a remarkable feature, not uncommon, however, in that part of the country -an isolated peat-bog, very deep, containing thick beds of shell marl, and enclosing a small lake, around whose margin grew aquatic plants in the utmost luxuriance. In a few years the farm possessed a mansion-house, offices, and steading, (an isometrical view and ground-plan of the last were figured in Plates I. and II. of the first edition, though enlarged to suit a larger farm ;) the surface was laid off in twelve fields of equal size and rectangular shape, to suit the six-course shift with three years' grass; some of those fields were fenced with thorn hedges, and some with stone dykes; the impetuous rivulet, the Vinny, was embanked out; the land upon the retentive bottom was drained in the old mode with stones, but a few acres were tried with furrow-drains filled with small stones, several years before the Deanston plan was made public by the late lamented James Smith; after the draining, the soil was trenchploughed with four horses; the farm-roads were extended and made serviceable, and all the waste land was brought into cultivation. I made the plans of the buildings myself, and also set off the form of the fields, and the lines of the fences and roads-not because I imagined that a professional man could not have done them better, but that my mind and hands might be familiarised with every variety of labour appertaining to rural affairs. The results each year were twenty-five acres of good turnips, instead of ten or twelve of bad, and fifty stacks of corn in the stackyard, instead of seventeen. The rent offered for the farm before I took possession of it was £150, and after I relinquished farming it was let for nearly £400. The fee-simple arising from this increase of rent represents a sum larger than what was expended in producing those results. I believe I was the first person to introduce into Forfarshire the feeding of cattle in small numbers in hammels, instead of large numbers in large courts; to show the advan

tage of building troughs around the walls of the courts to hold topped turnips, instead of spreading untopped ones upon the dung; to confine sheep upon turnips in winter with nets instead of hurdles—a plan which the late Mr Andrew Dalgairns of Ingliston readily adopted, at my suggestion, even with Black-faced sheep; and to grow the Swedish turnip in a larger proportion than the other sorts.

It will, I think, be admitted that the farmer who had the opportunities of learning the varieties of rural labour thus particularised, and who has bestowed all the powers of his faculties for years in acquiring them thoroughly, may, without presumption, consider himself sufficiently qualified to impart the results of his experience and observation to agricultural students. It is in the belief that a work of this comprehensive nature, compiled after the author exchanged the actual practice of farming for the onerous duties of conducting a portion of the agricultural press, may not only be of service to the rising generation, but also no small assistance to the numerous farmers who now receive young men into their houses for tuition in agriculture, that these volumes are offered to the public. So long as I was a pupil, no such book was in existence for me to consult, and having therefore personally experienced the inconvenience of being left to acquire what knowledge I could, chiefly by my own industry and perseverance, sympathy for the young pupil, placed in similar circumstances, has prompted me to endeavour to make his path smoother than I found my own.

It will be observed that the work is printed alternately in small and in large type. The information imparted by the large type has been chiefly derived from my own experience and observation; and whereever that has coincided with the dicta of previous writers, I have quoted them, for the double purpose of corroborating what I had to say by the experience of others, and of giving competent authorities, to direct the agricultural pupil to works descriptive of different branches of husbandry. The small type contains descriptions by myself, and quotations from writers of professional eminence, of the other kinds of farming beside the one adopted as the leading example; and also illustrations of each particular operation under discussion, derived from various works and documents, agricultural and scientific. As I had not space to raise discussions on the particular views broached on each subject, I have deemed it sufficient to direct the agricultural student to the sources where he would find the subjects more fully stated and discussed. Most of the illustrative passages alluded to have been derived from