Farming for Pleasure and Profit. Vols. IV., V., and VI.
By A. Roland, (Chapman and Hall.)—Here are three further instalments of Mr. Roland's manual of agriculture. In those volumes he treats of stock-keeping and cattle-rearing ; of drainage of land; irrigation and manures ; and of root and hop-growing. Whenever the author (or the editor, Mr. W. Ablett) describes his own practice, and details his own results, we feel wo are traversing safe ground. But when Mr. Roland ventures into the domains of agricultural chemistry, or geology or botany, thou we cannot avoid the conclusion that ho had better have left science and theory alone. His reference to the late
Mr. Moule's "silex" explanation of the potato-disease ; his classifi- cation of manures ; his notions as to the effects of gypsum on plants ; his curiously-antiquated and provokingly imperfect analysis of agricultural materials and products, and scores of analogous weak- nesses, detract greatly from the undoubted merits of the honest, practical instruction which he conveys.
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