PROSPECTUS. 
Tur Rurat Cychopepra communicates a thorough knowledge of farming, a general 
knowledge of gardening, and a very considerable knowledge of the natural sciences, 
and of general country affairs.» It presents to farmers a digest of all agricultural | 
literature ; and, at the same time, offers to gardeners, foresters, land-stewards, and 
other well-informed classes of the rural community, a larger amount of rich and well- 
timed information than can be found in any one of the numerous works which have 
been expressly written for their benefit. About one-fourth of it is reprint of selected 
articles or portions of articles in the Edinburgh Encyclopedia, the Conversations 
Lexicon, Booth and Boyes’ Encyclopedia of Chemistry, Millington’s Engineering, 
and some other very expensive publications; and all the remainder is original com- 
pilation,—remotely from the stores of twenty-five years’ observation and general 
reading,—and immediately from a library collected for the purpose, and contain- 
ing a mass of parliamentary papers, the principal agricultural and horticultural 
periodicals, and reports and transactions of public bodies, and all the best 
dissertational and systematic treatises on the cultivation of the soil, practical 
and scientific, ancient and modern, foreign and domestic. All the reprint has 
been carefully revised; all the compilation has been as thoroughly digested and 
as laboriously composed as if it had wholly consisted of original matter; and all 
the articles which incurred any risk of either error or deficiency of statement 
have been submitted to the revision of very eminent and well-known practical 
men. The work, as a whole, will be found powerfully adapted to the existing con- 
dition of the arts of culture, letting in upon them a flood of light from the investi- 
gations of science, and yet accurately and searchingly treating them in a homely 
and business-like manner. 
All the practices, implements, and buildings of the farm, the dairy, and the gar- 
den, both as they are and as they ought to be, are thoroughly discussed. The agri- 
cultural usages of different districts and countries, and occasionally those of different 
ages, are compared. The management of stock-farms, the breeding, improving, and 
rearing of sheep and cattle, and the right feeding and sanatory treatment of all the 
domestic animals, are fully stated. Most beasts, birds, and fishes which are service- 
~ able to man, whether in Britain or in other lands, are described ; and all birds, vermin, 
worms, and insects which are mischievous or annoying to the farmer or the gardener 
are minutely noticed. All plants in cultivation on the farm, most plants in culti- 
vation in the garden, all weeds, all grasses, and multitudes of useful or ornamental 
plants quite recently discovered. or but little known, are described proportionately 
to their several importance, and with ample reference to their habits, their value, 
and their proper treatment. The physiology and the diseases of both animals and 
a 
