202 Bibliography. 
derive a painful interest from being his last contributions to science. . His 
account of the fossil trees of the coal formation, excavated within a few 
miles of Manchester, in digging for the rail-road to Bolton, is particu- 
larly important, and is rendered perfectly intelligible by a gnot: section 
with the trees in situ. 
12. Fourth Report of the Agriculture of Massachusetts, counties of 
Franklin and Middlesex ; by Henry Cotman, Commissioner for the 
Agricultural Survey of the State. Boston: Dutton & Wentworth, 
State Printers. 1841. 8vo, pp. 528.—Mr. Colman is too well known to 
all our readers who value the advancement of the noblest human occupa- 
tion, to need praise at our hands. This is the fourth, and we are sorry to 
say the last report, from his hand, of Massachusetts agriculture. We 
should be surprised that a state so enlightened as to institute this survey, 
should stop it as it were in the bud, were we not informed that the ar- 
rest was accomplished by a legislative comrhittee, not one of whom 
had ever read a page of the three former reports of the able commis- 
sioner. Under these circumstances, no one car doubt but the survey 
which has already done so much for the State will be renewed. We 
are assured by gentlemen highly competent to judge, and whose prac 
tical opinion among farmers is worth every thing, that the present re- 
port is by far the most important agricultural document ever produced 
among us. From our own. perusal, we perceive that the amount of 
condensed and classified information is very great, and the quotations 
of actual experience from the best farms in the State, give the work 
a standard value very different from works of purely speculative con- 
tents. It is particularly full on the dairy, and = improved <r of 
cattle. 
We hail with extreme pleasure the revival of ica in this coun- 
try, looking upon it as the first, most important and happiest of merely 
human occupations. We ventured to predict ina notice of Liebig’s Ag 
ricultural. Chemistry, Vol. xn, p. 177, that the se See of that work 
would form a new era in agriculture. We may appeal to the history 
of the two past years for the truth of that statement. The press has 
literally teemed, — that period, with books on various d 
of agriculture, but especially on agricultural chemistry. There @re 
ee six or eight of these new publications on our tables 
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