Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 401, March 1849. Various

it will induce many of our dairy friends to buy the book.

      The following is the mode adopted in fattening calves at Strathaven, in Scotland, where the famous veal has been so long grown, chiefly for the Glasgow market: —

      "Strathaven in Scotland has long been famed for rearing good veal for the Glasgow and Edinburgh markets. The dairy farmers there retain the quey calves for maintaining the number of the cows, while they feed the male calves for veal. Their plan is simple, and may be followed anywhere. Milk only is given to the calves, and very seldom with any admixture, and they are not allowed to suck the cows. Some give milk, but sparingly at first, to whet the appetite, and prevent surfeit. The youngest calves get the first drawn milk, or fore-broads, as it is termed, and the older the afterings, even of two or three cows, being the richest portion of the milk. After being three or four weeks old, they get abundance of milk twice a-day. They get plenty of dry litter, fresh air, moderate warmth, and are kept nearly in the dark to check sportiveness. They are not bled during the time they are fed, and a lump of chalk is placed within their reach. They are fed from 4 to 6 weeks, when they fetch from £3 to £4 a-piece; and it is found more profitable to fatten the larger number of calves for that time, to succeed each other, of from 25 lb. to 30 lb. per quarter, than to force a fewer number beyond the state of marketable veal."

      The Caledonian Railway now puts this choice veal within the reach of English mouths; and we hope it will, at the same time, add to the prosperity and profits of the Strathaven breeders.

      The lambing of ewes, the care of the mothers and offspring, the diseases to which they are subject, as well as the other operations which demand the farmer's care in the months of spring, we must pass by. We could go on commenting and quoting from this book, as we have already done, till an entire number of Maga was filled up. But as this would be preposterous, we stop, earnestly pressing upon our readers to place a copy of this storehouse of rural information in the hands of every practical husbandman, in whose professional skill they are at all interested.

      Those who, like ourselves, take an interest in the diffusion of improved agriculture, scientific, and practical – and especially of our own agricultural literature in other countries – will be pleased to learn, not only that the work of which the title is prefixed to the present article, as well as the others upon agricultural chemistry to which we have referred, have made their way into the common stock of the book-stores of the United States, but that the editing of the American reprint of the second edition of the Book of the Farm has been undertaken by our friend Professor Norton, of Yale College, (may his shadow never be less!) so well known and esteemed in Scotland, where he obtained the Highland Society's £50 prize for a chemical examination of our native oat, which was published in their Transactions. He is a worthy representative of the "country of steady habits" to which he belongs; and we hope his countrymen will be discriminating enough to appreciate his own character and scientific labours, as well as the value of the books he undertakes to bring before them.

      THE SYCAMINE

I

      The frail yellow leaves they are falling

      As the wild winds sweep the grove;

      Plashy and dank is the sward beneath,

      And the sky it is gray above.

II

      Foaming adown the dark rocks,

      Dirge-like, the waterfall

      Mourns, as if mourning for something gone,

      For ever beyond its call.

III

      Sing, redbreast! from the russet spray;

      Thy song with the season blends:

      For the bees have left us with the blooms,

      And the swallows were summer friends.

IV

      The hawthorn bare, with berries sere,

      And the bramble by the stream,

      Matted, with clay on its yellow trails,

      Decay's wan emblems seem.

V

      On this slope bank how oft we lay

      In shadow of the sycamine tree;

      Pause, hoary Eld, and listen now —

      'Twas but the roaring of the sea!

VI

      Oh, the shouts and the laughter of yore —

      How the tones wind round the heart!

      Oh, the faces blent with youth's blue skies —

      And could ye so depart!

VII

      The crow screams back to the wood,

      And the sea-mew to the sea,

      And earth seems to the foot of man

      No resting-place to be.

VIII

      Search ye the corners of the world,

      And the isles beyond the main,

      And the main itself, for those who went

      To come not back again!

IX

      The rest are a remnant scatter'd

      Mid the living; and, for the dead,

      Tread lightly o'er the churchyard mounds;

      Ye know not where ye tread!

Δ

      AFTER A YEAR'S REPUBLICANISM

      The revolutionary year has almost closed; the anniversary of the days of February is at hand. A Year's Republicanism has run the course of its unchecked experience in France: to believe its own boast, it has ridden boldly forward, seated upon public and popular opinion, in the form of the widest, and, upon republican principle, the honest basis of universal suffrage; it has been left to its own full career, unimpeded by enemies either at home or abroad. And what has been the result of the race? – what has been the harvest which the republican soil, so carefully turned over, tilled, and manured, has produced?

      It would be a useless task to recapitulate all the different stages of the growth of the so-called fair green tree of liberty, and enumerate all the fruits that it has let drop from time to time, from the earliest days of last spring, to the tempestuous summer month of June; and then, through the duller, heavier, and gloomy months of autumn, to those of winter, which brought a president as a Christmas-box, and which have shown a few scattered gleams of fancied sunshine, cold at the best, and quickly obscured again by thick-coming clouds of dis-accord, misapprehension, and startling opposition of parties. All the world has had these fruits dished up to it – has handled them, examined them, tasted them; and, according to their opinions or prejudices, men have judged their savour bitter or sweet. All that can be said on the subject, for those who have digested them with pleasure, is, that "there's no accounting for tastes." In calculating the value of the year's republicanism which France has treasured up in its history, it is as well, then, to make no further examination into the items, but to look to the sum-total as far as it can be added up and put together, in the present aspect of affairs. In spite of the openly expressed detestation of the provinces to the capital – in spite of the increasing spirit of decentralisation, and the efforts made by the departments to insure a certain degree of importance to themselves – it is still Paris that reigns paramount in its power, and as the influential expression, however false in many respects it may be, of the general spirit of the country. It is upon the aspect of affairs in Paris, then, and all its numerous conflicting elements, that observation must still be directed, in order to make a résumé, as far as it is practicable, of this sum-total of a year's republican rule. The account must necessarily be, more or less, a confused one, for accounts are not strictly kept in Republican Paris – are continually varying in their results, according as the political arithmeticians set about their "casting up" – and are constantly subject to dispute among the accountants: the main figures, composing the sum-total, may, however, be enumerated without any great error, and then they