CURRENT LITERATURE.
Thoughts on Population and the Means of Comfortable Subsistence. By Agrestis. (Longman and Co.)—We have little hope that writers of the calibre of this gentleman will ever be brought to understand how greatly they would improve their books by omitting the preamble. The first forty pages are simply a rechaujfe of the letters to the newspapers in favour of early marriages, and Agrestis has not the literary ability by which the charm of novelty of form is sometimes given to old matter. Nor has the subject, in fact, any bearing on his essay. He thinks that people need not trouble themselves about the increase of population, because one way or another they will be able to find a subsistence, and he proceeds to show how much might be done in the way of cheapening the necessaries of life for the poor. But the poor, as a fact, do marry just as early as they feel inclined, and the middle classes, the people with 300L per annum, are obviously not deterred from wedlock by the price of provisions. When he does come to the point any literary shortcomings are forgiven because he shows himself to be writing on a subject with which he is specially acquainted. Milk and vegetables are the substances which he considers might be supplied at about one-half of the present prices, if the co-operative system, which has been so suc- cessful at Rochdale, were applied to farming. The cows are to be fed on cultivated green food, " to the partial exclusion of washy grains and
costly hay ;" and with the culture of cattle-food may be advantageously interwoven that of the common culinary vegetables, which would be not only fit for table use, but would supply "the possible requirements of a stalled herd in extraordinary seasons." It must be loft to practical men to test the calculations of the author. Whether the co-operative system could be applied to dairy farming, so as to give us pure milk at 2d. the imperial quart we are not competent to say, but certainly it might be applied to the retailing of it, so as to give us the pure milk at the same price we now pay for milk and water.
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