214 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH AGRICULTURE. 



five pounds for a " paddle plow for raising potatoes," were all the rewards 

 distributed in 1839 for what was destined to lie the most attractive, as well as 

 the most useful feature of the Society's exhibitions. After the Cambridge 

 meeting in 1840, the importance of the implements was acknowledged ; and 

 the number displayed, beginning with some 300 at Liverpool in 1841, in- 

 creased at the rate of about 100 on every sueceeJing year, until, in 1853, at 

 Gloucester, they reached their highest point in a total of 2C00. The rise or 

 fall of a few hundreds chiefly depends upon the importance and railway facil- 

 ities of tlie town where the show is held, and the number of articles exliihited 

 is less a test of the progress of mechanical invention than of the sales which 

 are likely to be effected in any particular district. The annual show is only 

 one of the numerous modes in which the makers advertise and display their 

 productions. The true prize to the manufacturer is plenty of custom. 



For several years past all the railway companies have agreed to convey live 

 stock free, and implements at half their usual charges, to and from the shows 

 of the Royal Agricultural Society, the railway company at the towns where 

 they are held generally providing accommodation for the mechanical compart- 

 ment. This at Chelmsford cost the Eastern Counties upwards of 3000/. Rail- 

 way f:ires and pace could alone bring the number of sliilling-pajing strangers 

 who contribute to the enormous expense of these exhibitions. The population 

 of tlic city of Salisbury, including men, women, and children, only amounts 

 to 10,000, hut the visitors to the show-yard in 1857 were over 35,000. This 

 is of itself a striking proof of tlie wide and eager practical interest which is 

 felt in agriculture, for there is little to gratify the eye of mere holiday gazers ; 

 and when in addition we consider the mountains of coal, iron, timber, artificial 

 manure, lime, and chalk, conveyed in the one direction, and the quantity of 

 live stock and corn in the other, we cannot help coming to the conclusion that 

 George Stephenson's locomotive has been the great cultivator of the farmer's 

 mind and the farmer's laud — the great agent for the estraorninary adrance 

 whicli British agriculture has achieved in the last quarter of a century. Very 

 significant were the figures given by the chairman of the Eastern Counties 

 Railway at the Clielmsford dinner, when he told his farmer friends that, in 

 the course of the preceding twelve months, tlie lines over which he presided 

 had conveyed 2-1.000 tons of guano and other portable manures, 700,000 quar- 

 ters of grain, 550 sacks of flour, 71,000 beasts, 380,000 sheep, 13,000 tons of 

 meat and poultry, and 43,000,000 quarts of milk. Who can calculate the 

 value of the money rewards held out to breeding, feeding, and corn-growing, 

 in the sh^ipe of four thousand miles of railway ? and liow little are men who 

 live in the midst of these changes conscious of their magnitude, until the re- 

 sults are collected and put upon paper ! 



The benefit which has accrued from the Royal Agricultural Society has sur- 

 passed the expectations of its most sanguine promoters. The improvements in 

 cultivation and implements, which had been effected by a few men in advance 

 of the spirit of the age, have now, in great part by its exertions, ceased to be 

 received by the majority of farmers with contemptuous incredulity, and by 

 thq laborers with stubborn opposition. In the old days distance operated as 

 a barrier to imitation, and three-fourths of England only heard of what was 

 done in the welf cultivated fourth to ridicule and despise it. When tlie father 

 of Mr. George Turner, of Barton, Devon, the well known breeder of Devon 

 cattle and Leicester sheep, who had learned sometliing in his visits with stock 

 to Ilolkham, began to drill turnips, a well-to-do neiglibor looked down from 

 the dividing bank and said to his son, " 1 suppose your father will be sowing 

 pepper out of a cruet next." Indeed the wiiole history of the turnip cultiva- 

 tion iiffords a characteristic contrast between the spirit ot the past and the 

 present. It took upwards of a century to establish the proper growth of this 

 crop, notwithst;uiding that the wealth of meat and corn which proceeded 

 from it was as plain to those who would open their eyes, as that a guinea was 

 worth one-and-tvventy shillings. The first difficulty was to persuade farmers 



