REVIEW.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LXI, Issue 7227, 29 April 1884, Page 5

REVIEW.

Mr Henry Brett, of Wyndham ctreet, Auckland, well known as the proprietor of the Auckland Evening Star, is the publisher of this work, which bears his name. Prom the title page, however, it appears that Mr Brett is .not the book's editor; that duty has been performed by Mr Thomson W. Leys, a member, unless we are mistaken, of the Star's reporting staff. The need for some such work as this will probably be disputed by few. None, at any rate, will deny the general demand for such a one. Of making " Useful Knowledge" books in England of the " Enquire Within Upon Everything" sort there has been no end since the days of Charles Knight, the brothers Chambers and the beginnings of cheap literature. The success of these and other publishers in the Mother Coun-, try has doubtless suggested to Mr Brett the notion of catering for the wants of the New Zealand colonist in a similar fashion. So successful has his effort been that in the North Island alone, so we are informed, more than two thousand copies of the "Colonists' Guide" have already been sold at the price of .£1 per copy. ' To review a book of this sort fairly is no such easy matter. To begin with, it contains 850 pages of tolerably close printing, and the pages contain on the average about 45 lines apiece. As for the matter, it comprises hints on pretty well everything under the sun that can possibly concern the agricultural or pastoral settler, in North Island or in South, in the virgin bush, or on the treeless plains. The farm, the garden, the poultry yard, the vineyard and the orchard are all attended to. Mr Leys seems evidently to have impressed upon his contributors the necessity of writing in a clear, simple, business-like style, and they to have attended to his instructions, for there is an absence throughout of that " high-falutin" style, which, diluted with national slang, forms the bane of so many otherwise excellent American handbooks of this class.

The patent drawback to the usefulness to the New Zealand farmer of most English agricultural writing is found, of course, in the difference of climate between this Colony and the Mother Country. Southland, of course, has plenty of English weather, and so have elevated districts generally throughout this island. But along the littoral, where most of our settlement and fertile land lie, the climate approximates more to that of the South of France without the dreaded Bise, be it understood. The North Island of course is Italy minus the sirocco—no small improvement. Now, as doctors know, medicines must often be regulated by the state of the patient's temperature. Nothing, indeed, is more necessary to watch. In the same way much that may be good for the soil in cold, damp England,produces anything but healthy results under the glowing, at times even feverish, skies of New Zealand.

Mr Leys' pages begin ah ovo by telling the settler how to build his cottage, fell timber, put up fences, break up virgin soil, remove stumps, plant trees and vegetables. But it is not only to the rough bush settler that the work will be useful. Indeed, if it has a fault, it is in trying to treat many subjects with a uniform thorough fulness. For example, the portion headed " The Family Doctor " is calculated to seriously interfere with the practice of some of our country medicos, though doubtless the chemist and the undertaker will be grateful to those farmers who, inspired by its recipes, venture on the dangerous ground of self-treatment. One of the driest, but at the same time most useful portions of the " Guide," is contained under the head " Legal Memoranda." In this Mr Thomas Cotter, an Auckland solicitor, has given digests of the various Acts relating to scab, fencing, roads, and so forth, just at present affecting the country districts of this Colony. For a few years, until these are all repealed and amended that is, farmers, membeis of Eoad Boards, and others could hardly have a better work of reference than Mr Cotter's.

* " Brett's Colonists' Guide and Cyclopaedia of Useful Knowledge," being a compendium of information by practical Colonists upon farming, horticulture, and all subjects of interest to New Zealand Eettlers. Edited by Thomson W. Leys.