What a concentration of varied knowledge is seen in this single work of art! From how many sources has this knowledge come!--how many diverse pursuits or sciences have yielded their necessary quota to the common stock!--how many varied talents have been put under contribution to contrive its many parts, and put them fittingly together! But, to the pursuits of the humble farmer, more aids still contribute than to those of the dauntless navigator. His patient and quiet life on land is as dependent upon varied knowledge, draws its instruction from as many sources, and is more bound up in visible union with all the branches of human science, than even the active and stirring life of the dweller on the sea. Some of our journal writers are accustomed to ridicule the results of agricultural skill; to undervalue our successful field improvements; to laugh at Smithfield Christmas cattle, and at the exhibitions of our great annual shows. In thoughtlessness, often in ignorance, they write, and always for a temporary effect, which our progressing agriculture can well afford to pass by. But we ask our rural reader to turn up the first volume of the _Book of the Farm_, and to cast his eye for a moment on the triad of beautiful shorthorns represented in the sixth plate; or on the magnificent stallion of the fourth plate, or on the graceful sheep of the seventh. We pass over the _points_ in which, to the educated eye, their beauty consists; we dismiss, for the present, all consideration of their perfection as well-bred animals, and their fitness for the special purposes for which they have been reared. We wish him to tell us, if he can, how much mind has gone to the breeding, rearing, and feeding of these animals--how many varied branches of knowledge have lent their aid to this apparently simple and un-imposing result.