PREFACE. "V 



the crop, the whole expenses, and every important cir- 

 cumstance connected with it." 



If the premiums offered by the society are not large 

 enough to pay for care and accuracy of measurement, let 

 them be made larger, or let the time required to arrive at 

 a satisfactory result be paid for, else let the premium be 

 withheld altogether. 



This subject demands the earnest and immediate 

 attention of the officers of those societies in which this 

 loose and defective method of measurement exists. 

 While some sections, encouraged by the generous bounty 

 of the State, are laboring with all the earnestness and 

 vigor of youth to add to our practical knowledge of agri- 

 culture, accurate facts and statistics, it is wrong and 

 unfair that other sections, receiving an equal portion of 

 this bounty, should indulge the apathy of age, and come 

 short of the mark, for the want of a proper system of 

 measurement.* 



The prosperity of the societies has continued to in- 

 crease, while many of them have added new features of 

 attraction to the usual exhibitions, in the shape of per- 

 manent grounds, halls, tracks, &c. The report of the 

 President and Secretary of the Norfolk Society, with 

 reference to this point, says : " The Society, since its last 

 annual exhibition, has added to its grounds, by purchase, 

 eight acres of land, at a cost of ^2,500, which has been 

 enclosed by a tight board fence, at a cost of ^750. 



"This addition was required, to afford room for a 

 course or track in which animals might be displayed and 

 their qualities of beauty and speed tested, in presence of 



• See Note on this subject, p. 86. 



