vi PREFACE.

the Complete Farmer; clover is not called a grass, the Scotch pine a fir, or tubers roots, as in the Code; earth, soil, and mould are not con- founded as in most farming books; and no cultivator is here told, as he is in Arthur Young's Farmers’ Kalendar(May, art. Hemp, Ist edit. 1790, 12th edit. 1823.) to make the rent per acre a criterion in choosing a soil for any plant.

The recent changes, indeed, which have taken place in the market value of currency, render price a criterion of much too temporary a nature to be employed in any work which aims at general and perma- nent utility. For this reason we have in the Encyclopedia generally avoided money calculations, indicating the value of objects or operations by the quantity of materials and labor requisite to pro- duce them; or by stating their cost relatively to the cost of other articles.

We have also avoided entering on the subject of state policy, as to the relative protection of Agriculture and manufactures, or of the protection of the home against the foreign grower of corn. Natural prices will always be safer for the farmer than artificial ones, and with low prices the farmer has the chance of deriving a greater benefit on an extraordinary

rise, and sustaining less loss on an extraordinary fall. If the prices of

corn were one half lower than they are, neither farmers nor proprietors would find their comforts diminished; for the value of manufac- tures and importations would fall in proportion to that of Agricultural produce. Price, it is true, is not always value; but they are never materially different for any length of time.

By referring to the Kalendarial Index, those parts of this work which treat of farm and forest culture, and management, may be consulted monthly as the operations require to be performed; and by recurring to the General Index, any particular subject may be traced alphabetically through all its ramifications of history, theory, practice, and statistics. Thus we have here combined an Agricultural Treatise, a Husbandman’s Kalendar, and a Dictionary of Rural Affairs.

J. CL.

Bayswater, June 19, 1825.

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