This one extract will alone illustrate the opinion we have already expressed, in regard to the soundness and safety of the advice on practical subjects, which our author ventures to give.
We pass over a hundred pages devoted to ploughing and sowing, and the selection of seed. On the last of which points our inclination would lead us to dwell--especially in reference to the steeping of seeds, a subject which at present engages so much attention, and upon which so much nonsense and mercantile puffing has been recently expended. But our limits restrain us.
Whether it is that our own predilections incline us more to those parts of his book, or that Mr Stephens writes these better--with heart and kindliness he certainly does write[29]--we scarcely know, but we certainly like all his chapter upon animals. _The lambing of ewes_ is the subject of chapter fifty-four.
In all lines of life there are the skilful and the unskilful, and the former are always the fewer in number. In reference to shepherds, Mr Stephens says:--
"No better proof need be adduced of the fewness of skilful shepherds, than the loss which every breeder of sheep sustains every year, especially in bad weather. I knew a shepherd who possessed unwearied attention, but was deficient in skill, and being over-anxious, always assisted the ewes in lambing before the proper time; and as he kept the ewes in too high condition, the consequence was, that every year he lost a number of both ewes and lambs; and in one season of bad weather the loss amounted to the large number of twenty-six ewes, and I forget of how many lambs, in a dock of only ten score of ewes. I knew another shepherd who was far from being solicitous about his charge, though certainly not careless of it, yet his skill was so undoubted, that he chiefly depended upon it, and his success was so eminent, that the loss of a ewe or lamb under his charge was matter of surprise. Of these two shepherds--the attentive and the skilful--it would appear that the skilful is the safer, and of course the more valuable, though it must be owned, that it is better to _prevent_ evils by skilful attention, than to _cure_ them by attentive skill; yet it is only by the union of both these qualities that a perfect shepherd can be formed."--(Vol. ii. p. 600.)