4 
plants are abundantly explained. Agricultural chemistry, down to its most recent 
discoveries, is fully taught; and as much general chemistry as seems desirable for 
illustrating it, is added. Soils, subsoils, rocks, mineral manures, and mineral trans- 
mutations, are exhibited in the light of at once geology, analysis, and practical 
adaptation. Legal knowledge, in all matters which can affect the landlord and the 
tenant, or the master and the servant, is communicated ; and information on car- 
pentry, masonry, smithy-work, and other departments of art occasionally required on 
the farm and in the garden, is somewhat freely given. In short, the drift of the 
Rurau CycLopmpia is to supply farmers, gardeners, foresters, and similar classes with 
all the information they can want for their several professions; or to place before 
them, in a manner of the easiest access, and in a state of perfect readiness for their 
use, a larger and wealthier system of professional knowledge than any but the most 
highly favoured could obtain from prolonged and anxious consultation of both men 
and. books. 
This work is, thus, much more comprehensive than any of the numerous ones 
of its class which have yet appeared. It condenses out of the reports and the 
periodicals masses of important agricultural matter at which they scarcely glance ; 
it discusses many subjects of farming and gardening which they either pass over or 
very slightly touch ; it introduces entire departments of valuable knowledge which » 
they altogether exclude; it contains, in quite a practical form, a considerable body 
of useful scientific matter which they seem to regard as totally beyond their sphere 
it rejects biography, topography, history, topographical statistics, personal anecdotes, 
and some other trivial features with which several are more or less encumbered; it 
greatly excels most, and will bear comparison with the best, in both the amplitude 
and the minuteness of its practical details; and, with one partial exception, it 
stands alone, as a mainly and professedly agricultural work, in conjointly addressing 
farmers, gardeners, and foresters,—in making the arts of these classes illustrate one — 
another,—and in attempting to be a general instructor of the community upon rural 
affairs. These statements are made, not invidiously, nor with the slightest inten- 
tion of detracting from the great and many excellencies of Mill, Donaldson, Dickson, 
Young, Sinclair, Loudon, Stephen, Johnson, Low, Sproule, Doyle, Rham, and others, 
but solely for the purpose of pointing out the chief grounds on which the present 
work professes to go in advance of its predecessors, and to supply a great and im 
portant desideratum in rural literature. 
The alphabetical arrangement of the work affords the utmost facility of consulting 
it for occasional or daily use; and copious references are made from article to article, 
to direct the reader to all the related parts of each subject; while a general Introduc- 
tion will be given, to connect all the principal subjects into a system, and to serve 
as a guide to the elementary learner. 
