DESCRIPTION OF THE PLATES.

On inspecting the Plates in this volume, the reader is requested to keepin mind the following explanations regarding them.

The Plans of the Steadings, from Plate I. to X., are not plans of any exist-ing steadings; they are only illustrations of the principles upon which theAuthors consider that the apartments of all steadings ought to be arranged.The principles are simple, as expressed in general terms at p. 6, and, in par-ticular, they are these : That straw, being the most bulky and most useful in-gredient in a steading in winter, should be placed at its centre, as the pointmost accessible to every apartment; that the apartments required for each sortof work in the steading should be placed next each other, as it were in groups,to avoid crossings when different sorts of work are simultaneously carried on,as are inconveniently experienced in too many existing steadings ; that ampleaccommodation should be afforded to each sort of work to be done ; andthat the groups of apartments should bear such a relation to each other asto be in strict conformity with the system of agriculture adopted on the farm.The plans, in illustration of the principles just enunciated, are the results ofmuch thought and practical experience in the endeavour to apply them to actualuse. In this endeavour, it will be observed that the apartments appropriatedto arable culture—such as the work-house stable, cart-shed—are placed on theone side of the straw-barn, while those devoted to live stock, whether in adairy, breeding, or feeding farm, are placed on the other side. The plansmight be adopted just as they stand, or modified according to circumstances—the arrangements being rather suggestive than imperative. For example,the apartments consigned to the use of the arable part of the farm may beplaced on the right or the left of the straw-barn, according to convenience inrelation to the fields; and the same transposition may be made as regardsthe apartments occupied by breeding, feeding, or dairy stock ; or any apart-ment may be larger or smaller, according to the work expected to be done in it.

The attention of the reader is particularly directed to the construction of theplans, they being neither the common ground-plan, nor the isometric perspec-tive. The obvious objection to the ordinary ground-plan is, that it exhibits nomore than a horizontal section of the walls at the level of the ground, whichaffords nothing more than a mere outline of the building. The elevated,horizontally-sectional, perspective plans here adopted, convey to the mind aclear idea of the form and capacity of each apartment, with its doors andwindows, as if finished*for use; while the isometric mode of perspective, asfar as it is given, affords equal facility for the measurement of the walls withthe compasses as the common ground-plan, and at the same time preservesthe value of a full isometrical perspective. A ground-plan, moreover, im-