But if the _life_ of the ploughman is familiar to our author, the _work_ he has to do, and the mode of doing it well, and the reason why it should be done one way here, and another way there, are no less so. The uninitiated have no idea of the complicated patterns which the ploughman works, according to the nature of the soil and the season of the year in which he labours. He may be "gathering up--crown-and-furrow ploughing--casting, or yoking, or coupling ridges--casting ridges with gore furrows--cleaving down ridges with or without gore furrows--ploughing two-out-and-two-in--ploughing in breaks--cross-furrowing--angle-ploughing, ribbing, and drilling--or he may be preparing the land by feering or striking the ridges."-- (Vol. i. p. 464.) All these methods of turning up the land are described and illustrated by wood-cuts, and we are sure quite as effectually done upon paper as if the author had been explaining them upon his own farm, guiding one of his own best ploughs, and strengthened by a basin of good brose made from his own meal-chest. But the practical skill of Mr. Stephens is not confined to the lower walks of the agricultural life. The ploughman sometimes qualifies himself to become a steward, that he may rid himself of the drudgery of working horses. He has then new duties to perform, which are thus generally described. "The duty of the _steward_ or _grieve_, as he is called in some parts of Scotland, and _bailiff_ in England, consists in receiving general instructions from his master, the farmer, which he sees executed by the people under his charge. He exercises a direct control over the ploughmen and field-workers.... It is his duty to enforce the commands of his master, and to check every deviation from rectitude he may observe in the servants against his interests. It is not generally understood that he has control over the shepherd, the hedger, or the cattleman, who are stewards, in one sense, over their respective departments of labour.... He should always deliver the daily allowance of corn to the horses. _He should be the first person out of bed in the morning, and the last in it at night_. On most farms, he sows the seed in spring, superintends the field-workers in summer, tends the harvest-field and builds the stacks in autumn, and thrashes the corn with the mill, and cleans it with the winnowing-machine in winter. He keeps an account of the workpeople's time, and of the quantity of grain thrashed, consumed on the farm, and delivered to purchasers."--Vol. i. p. 221. The practical man who reads the above detail of the steward's duties, will see at once that it must have been written by "one of themselves;" and, by its correctness, will be able to judge of the full faith which may be placed in the numerous other details upon every branch of practical farming with which the work now before us is so full.