opportunities of knowledge he conjoins an unbounded enthusiasm and an unconquerable industry. Never before in one person, probably, had there met such a combination of qualifications fitting him to compose a standard work on agriculture. And thus equipped and furnished, never, we believe, did any author devote his energies with more untiring and conscientious fidelity to the performance of his self-imposed task. No inquiry seems too minute or insignificant--none too gigantic or laborious, if it will add to the store of instruction which he desires to communicate. He gathers information from all authors, famous or obscure, and levies assistance from all sciences, that he may satisfy his reader, and present his work perfect and complete! And now we beg to congratulate the author on the completion of his great work, for a _magnum opus_ it emphatically is; and to acknowledge, with gratitude, the infinite obligations under which he has laid the agricultural world. The primary intention of the author seems to have been to compose a work that might prove a manual of instruction to young men who were studying agriculture, and preparing themselves for the practical business of farming. But, in reality, the work has outgrown the original idea; and it forms now a complete code of instruction not only to the learner, but to the experienced farmer, to the landowner, and, in fact, to every one whose interests are dependant on agriculture, or whose duties lie in any one of the multifarious departments of rural affairs. The plan of the work is perfectly original, (although old Palladius may have given the hint,) and seems to us peculiarly felicitous. Mr Stephens divides the year into the four agricultural seasons--not absolutely coincident with the chronological division, but sufficiently distinctive--each having its respective class of operations to perform. The work might, in this aspect, be described as the Farmer's Book of the Seasons, with the employments peculiar to each copiously described. There are undoubtedly cycles, recurring periods, if not of repose, at least of change, in the farmer's employment; and, by keeping in view these landmarks of nature, the author enables his reader to comprehend, step by step, the progressive advancement that takes place in the business of husbandry. We know no other work that affects even to do this, or from which it would be possible for the student to acquire an intelligible conception of the actual system of husbandry, in the natural and consecutive order in which her processes take place. It seems strange that, in preceding works, a similar plan had not been adopted. In learning a profession men begin at the beginning, and proceed gradually onwards through the curriculum of study and of practice. How should it have been thought that it could be otherwise in agriculture? Agricultural dictionaries and cyclopædias cannot possibly expound a system of husbandry; and it would defy any sagacity to frame one out of them.