21e Book of Me Landed Estate. By Robert E. Brown.
(Blackwood.) —This is a book which a reviewer among whose advantages and respon- sibilities the possession and management of "landed estate " is not likely to be included is obviously incompetent to deal with satisfactorily. He can say little more than that it seems to him very thorough and com- plete, no subject which it occurs to him to think of is omitted ; every- thing is discussed with copious detail, with apparent mastery and full- ness of knowledge. The value of land, the management of farms, the best methods of road-making, the building of homesteads and cottages, the making of plantations, with statistics of the comparative value of various trees, these are a few of the topics discussed. We speak, it must be understood, from outside, but the book seems a thoroughly good one.—Arboriculture, by John Grigor (Edmonston and Douglas), may be referred to the same class of books, being devoted to the one special branch of the subject which its name indicates. It has, however, a personal interest for many who have yo chance of ever realizing the possession of " landed estate." Every man who has a garden on a tenure sufficiently durable to make it worth his while to improve it, and who can spare a few pounds for the purpose, may read Mr. Grigor's book with pleasure and profit. Nor is it without something of a literary value. There is a great deal to be said about trees, which indeed are unsurpassed among natural objects for the variety of interest which attaches to them. Mr. Grigor does not confine himself to business, but writes much that those who have never had any other relation with trees than looking at them, sitting under them, and possibly musing about them may well enjoy. This seems a convenient time to warn any of our readers who may find themselves at Harrogate that they must not neglect to visit the village of Cowthorpe, some few miles to the east, where there is an oak, which Mr. Grigor tells us, " is of a girth very far beyond that of any species of living tree he has ever seen. It measures seventy-eight feet in cir- cumference close to the ground, and forty-eight at the height of a yard."
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