Farm Implements, and the Principles of THRIE Construction and USe: an elementary and familiar trestise on Mechanics, and on natural philosophy generally, as applied to the ordinary practices of Agriculture. With 200 engraved Illustrations. By JOHN J. Thomas, New York: Hastes & BROTEERS, Publishers.

Mr. Thomas has done the agricultural community a great service in the preparation of this book. It was much needed. Improvements in the construction of farm implements and maohinery have contributed largely to the progress which has been recently made in the art of cultivation. Compare for a moment our modern plows, cultivators, or horse-hoes, reapers, mowing machines, straw and hay cutters, root cutters, etc., with the farmer's implements of over five and twenty years ago, and what a difference we see. Science has been silently and steadily at work in effecting the vast improvements, placing new powers in the hands of the husbandman, by which he is not only enabled to cultivate three or four time the amount of land with the same amount of labor, but to do it infinitely better. Besides, this application of science to the improvement of implements and machines has elevated the art of husbandry from the condition of a rude, unintellectual routine of drudgery, to that of a pursuit which is daily attracting to it men of wealth, education, and refinement.

Every farmer, and every fanner's son; must be aware of all this; a glance among the stock of implements cannot fail to suggest to them the service which science and invention have conferred upon them. But it is not enough to know this. The principles upon which this great improvement are based should be studied. No man should be satisfied with merely the poesession of the best plow, or reaper, or thrashing machine; but should study its construction, the various forces which combine in giving it completeness and efficacy, and the natural principles or laws from which these forces spring. It is this sort of study only which will make implements and machinery intelligible, and enable the operator to adjust their parts, and use them to the greatest possible advantage.

Comparatively perfect as are our modern implements, no one will say that they cannot be still further improved. Our belief is that the next ten years will do more for them than has the past twenty. Mechanics have not received proper aid and cooperation from the practical cultivator, simply because the cultivator has thought it not his province to invent, but to use the inventions of others. When the farmer will study the principles of construction, he will soon be able to suggest improvements to the mechanio; and then we may expect improvements in earnest.

Mr. Thomas' work will give an impulse to this matter, which cannot fail to result in great benefits to the agricultural interests of this country. We wish, therefore, to see it placed immediately in the hands of every farmer and farmer's son, as an indispensable book, and school commissioners should see that it has a place on the shelves of every rural district school library. It is admirably adapted for popular use as a text book. The different subjects are judiciously divided into chapters, and sub-divided into sections; the illustrations are ample and excellent; the style is plain and concise, unencumbered by needless technicalities; and there is everywhere that carefulness and precision that characterizes all the writings of Mr. Thomas. Every statement is made in such a straightforward manner that even a child could not mistake or fail to discover the point and meaning. This we consider an excellency worthy of being pointed out in a book of this kind.

In addition to thus expressing our opinion of the book, we would gladly, if space permitted, give an epitomized statement of its contents, but we must refer to the book itself.

Notices Of Books, Pampblets #1

Victoria Regia ; or The Great Water Lilt or America, with a brief account of its discovery and Introduction into cultivation, with illustrations by WM, Sharp, from specimens grown at Salem, Mass. By John Fax. Alley. Boston: Dutten & Wentwoetil 1854.

This wonderful and magnificent Water Lily, Victoria regia, whose leaves are six feet in diameter and flowers three feet in circumference, has bloomed finely with Mr. Allen, of Salem, Mass.; and it must be gratifying intelligence to those who feel an interest in the wonders and beauties of the vegetable kingdom, that this gentleman has seized the opportunity to prepare and publish a complete description of it, and an account of its history and introduction, with ample and beautiful illustrations of both the plant and its flowers in their various styles of growth and development. The volume is a superb one, not unworthy of this peerless Queen of Water Lilies, and is appropriately dedicated to Caleb Cope, Esq., ex-President of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, to whose zeal in horticulture we are indebted for the introduction of many rare and beautiful plants, and to whom belongs the honor of first cultivating and flowering the Victoria regia in the United States.