Book farmers come to us now and again. These are usually persons from Britain, possessing some means, but not sufficient to make them gentlemen at home. They have had no particular knowledge of farming at home, but since farming is supposed to be so easy a matter in Canada, they do not for a moment doubt their ability to get on with a farm. They resort to the best works on agriculture; and after the perusal of a few volumes really begin to flatter themselves that they have a very superior knowledge of farming, and are able to teach the Canadian on his native heath just how it ought to be done. Such a man purchases his farm and usually pays the cash down for it, and for his stock as well. Searching over the community he finds a pair of the heaviest horses he can, for the light Canadian horses, he knows, will be of no use to him, and he gets some long poles made at the nearest carpenter shop, and hires the village painter to paint them in black and red sections that he may set them up for his man to strike out his lands by in ploughing. Light, strong, durable Canadian harness is not to his mind, for he recollects seeing the plough horses in England return from the fields with great broad back-bands on their harness, to which were attached immense iron chains of traces, and he follows suit. And he sets John to ploughing, properly equipped, not for a moment doubting the result of all this preparation. And after a proper method of ploughing he does raise fair crops as a rule, for our lands are ordinarily so rich that if they have even a fair show at all they will produce. Harvest-time coming on, many other hands are brought into requisition, and he follows up the old time-honored custom in England of serving up the quart of beer per day to each hand. In due time his harvest is all garnered properly, and his work nicely done. His man comes in in the morning and tells him, about the time the first few rains come on, that “one of the sheep is sick.” “All right, John, I will attend to it,” for, of course, he can, for he knows he has at his elbow, upon the shelf, somebody’s treatise on the sheep, which is the best extant. The sheep volume is brought down and closely scanned, and the right page describing the disease sheep ought to have at this time of the year found. With the volume under arm he sallies forth to view the sheep, while John follows with the remedies. Arrived at the sheep he adjusts his spectacles at the proper angle upon his nose, and intently examines his sick patient The more he examines his patient and gets at its symptoms the more he is in doubt if the symptoms really correspond with those mentioned on the particular page of the treatise.