Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1870 [PAGE 236]

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more remarkable work in the amount of learning, diligence and general accuracy it displays. It is a monument of the literary toil and patient industry of its author, and no doubt the most complete book of its kind. Of American works of a kindred character, Copeland's Country Life and Allen's American Farm Book will suggest themselves as desirable ; but the Kural Affairs of J. J. Thomas, although subject to the drawbacks of periodical publication and repetition of views, are to my mind the best miscellaneous work on rural affairs yet written for American use. Of Bibliographical works, I only name the Wet Days at Edgewood, which is always readable and generally instructive, and the bibliographical notices in Loudon's Encyclopaedia of Agriculture. The list of American works in the Report of the Commissioner of Agriculture for 1868 is valuable. Under the general or miscellaneous head, also comes a formidable lot of Reports and Transactions of government departments, societies, clubs, boards, etc. Of our American States, the following, have published reports : Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, Tennessee, California and Oregon. Besides these we have the reports of more local or private organizations, and the Patent Office Reports followed by the more valuable reports of the Commissioner of Agriculture, which two last, since 1847,^ have furnished a national report of more or less value to the farmer. In British America, some of the provinces, I believe, publish annual reports. The various Agricultural Societies of Great Britain have their reports, but I know very little of them. Among them are the Bath and West of England Society, organized in 1777; the Highland Society of Scotland, organized in 1784 ; the Board of Agriculture in 1793, and the Royal Agricultural Society in 1838, twenty-five of whose volumes are now on our library shelves. France has numerous societies, and I presume more or less reports. Germany still more. In fact, we find that in England, Germany, and France, we must look for the great proportion of modern thought on Agriculture. Agricultural annuals, quarterlies, and monthly and weekly publications, are mostly of this character. We already ha^e several valuable annuals in this country, in the shape of the Rural Register, of the Country Gentleman, the American Agricultural and Horticultural annuals of the American Agriculturalist, the Prairie Farmer Annual and the Western Rural Annual of our own State. There are similar publications in England which I have not seen; a very excellent one, L'Annee Agricole, besides Almanach du Cultivateur, Almanach du Jardinier, etc., in France, and others in Germany. Little has been done in this country in the way of Agricultural quarterlies or magazines, although the more exhaustive and well considered treatment of topics that they would bring with them, makes them much to be desired. The writing done for our American agricultural papers is often ill considered, generally hastily and carelessly expressed, and is never thorough, for that implies an extent of space in the columns of a newspaper that the public taste for variety will not brook. In England they have the Farmer's Magazine and the Quarterly Journal of Agriculture. In France, Les Chroniques de TAgricul-