PROGRESS OF ENGLISH AGRICULTURE. 215 



to try it at all ; and not one turnip was ever seen on a field in Northumberland 

 till between 1760 and 1770. The second difficulty was to p;et them to be at 

 the expense of hoeing, insomuch that Young said that he should be heard 

 with incredulity in most counties when he bore testimony to the vast benefits 

 which were derived in Norfolk from this indispensable portion of t!ie process. 

 The third difficulty wag to induce them to replace broadcast sowing by drill- 

 ing, which appeared, as we see, to novices no less ridiculous than peppering 

 the land from a cruet. Tiie bigotry of the farmer cramped the energies of the 

 mechanics whom he now welcomes as among his best friends. The imple- 

 ments, even by the first manufacturers, from the absence of criticism and 

 competition, from the limited extent of custom, and from the want of artisans 

 skilled in working iron, were, however excellent in idea, both clumsy and 

 costly. The choicest specimens which existed in 1840 have been so altered 

 in execution l)y cheaper materials and improved workmanship that they can 

 scarcely be recognized. 



The Koyal Agricultural Society, with its council of peers, squires, tenants, 

 and implement-makers — its professors of chemistry, botany, and veterinary 

 art — its thousands of subscribers, spread over every county of England — its 

 Journal of transactions and reports — and, above all, its annual encampments 

 in the centres of successive districts — has done for farming what the great fairs 

 of the middle ages did for commerce — concentrated and diffused knowledge, 

 brought customers and producers into contact, and helped to extinguish preju- 

 dices in the excitement of social gatherings. They have carried to provincial 

 cities the best live stock, the best implements, and the best cultivators. The 

 influence of example, of competition, and even of rank fashion, has been 

 brought to bear on local obstinacy. Squires have been encouraged to improve 

 their estates by the speeches of even greater men than themselves, and young 

 noblemen, in want of an object, have found it in agricultural duties. Imple- 

 ment-makers have had the advantage of the suggestions of their customers, 

 and, thus taught and teaching at the same time, have every year become more 

 dependent on tenant, and less on fancy farmers. Men who went to Shows 

 staunch champions of the flail, have been vanquished by the mere sight of a 

 steam-engine driving barn-machinery ; as an old Homeric Greek, if he could 

 revisit the earth, would instantly recognize the inferiority of stones hurled by 

 the hand to the iron balls projected from the cannon's mouth. The greatest 

 landlords, wandering unknown in the show-yards, have had opportunities of 

 learning wholesome truths from the tenants of other landlors. Self-satisfied 

 ignorance is abashed, and triumphant skill finds at once a large and eager 

 audience. These agricultural exhibitions are, in fact, the Woburn and Holk- 

 ham sheep-shearings, made national and expanded to the dimensions of an age 

 of steam-driven threshing-machines. 



Having described the important functions discharged by this central Society 

 for the advancement of farming, we proceed to touch upon the. particular im- 

 provements which have been effected during its career. Attempts to drain 

 have been made from the earliest times. Specimens may be seen of very clever 

 workmanship more than a hundred years old ; but the when it should be done, 

 and the why, and tlie how, had never been reduced to rule. Lord Bacon, who 

 had a large collection of works upon agriculture, had them one day piled up 

 in the court-yard and set on fire, for, said he. "In all these books I find no 

 principles; they can, therefore, be of no use to any man." This was just the 

 deficiency with respect to drainage, and it could not therefore progress until 

 Josiah Parkes, in 1843, expounded the " principles," and in 1845 made sug- 

 gestions which led to the manufacture of the steel tools which were necessary 

 for forming the deep cuttings, and the cheap pipes which were essential to car- 

 rying off the water from them when formed. Up to 1843 little was done 

 beyond tapping springs, or endeavoring to convey away the rain which fell on 

 the surface by drains so shallow that the plow frequently spoiled them, it 

 being the popular belief that moisture would not penetrate through retentive 



