The position, on the other hand, of those actually engaged in the business of agriculture, is far too critical to permit them indolently to lie on their oars. Within the last twenty years, immense advances have been made to improve our knowledge of the theory and practice of husbandry in all its branches; and if the owners and occupants of land are ignorant of these,--if they are ill-informed in their own business--if lack of knowledge compels them to sit silent when the spruce merchant glibly taunts them for their ignorance of the lights shed on their profession by the torch of modern science--if they are unable to defend themselves, and to vindicate the important interests which they represent--let the existing race of proprietors and farmers know assuredly that, if they are to fall degraded from their present position, they will, in the case supposed, fall the unpitied victims of commercial rapacity and a vicious legislation. Whatever may be the ultimate phase in which agriculture shall emerge from the cloud now resting on it, it is evident that those whose interests, capital, and prospects are dependant on the produce of the soil, were never urged by so pressing considerations to acquaint themselves fully and accurately with the science and practice of their profession. There never was a juncture, we venture to assert, in the history of British husbandry, that so loudly demanded the publication of a work on agriculture at once copious and minute in its scientific details--fully up to the mark of modern improvement--incorporating everything old and new likely to throw light upon the subject--and detailing faithfully the latest experiments and discoveries of chemical, physiological, and mechanical science; and we can honestly congratulate the British agriculturist, that, in the new edition of Mr Stephens' _Book of the Farm_, he truly possesses such a work.