il2 



THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE, 



thorn to exhibit at all. IttJiey were wise they would refraia 

 from entering ialo such a competition. Again, if tlie dif- 

 ficulties which presented themselves in tlie wayof engineering 

 tiials were to be surmounted, there must be a clear detail 

 of the points on which the competition was to depend, and 

 upon which the award of the judges would be founded 

 ( Hear, hear). No man would send a racehorse (o the field 

 unless he knew whether he was to race over turf, or to cross 

 tlie country; and, in like manner agricultural implement- 

 makers must be infoi-med beforehand what was desired by 

 those who were to sit in judgment on their productions. 

 Without this they would not dare to incur the risk of failure. 

 The question was, he believed, niucli too difficult to be 

 decided at that meeting. They ( the agricultural implement- 

 makers) admitted that trials were deshable, and that plenty 

 of time should be given to them, in order to make the 

 awards perfect; but they thought that so long as prizes 

 were part and parcel of the stimulus of competition, great 

 care should be taken that it should be wholesomely stimu- 

 l;ited(Hear, hear). When persons had applied to his firm 

 f jr an implement, they Jiad often said in eflect, " If you 

 want a racing engine to make a great show under skilled 

 manipulation buy the prize machine," but " If you 

 want an implement that wiU do a day's work regularly, if 

 you want a good machine, oragood engine, don't take the one 

 that has got a prize" (laughter). His desire in making these 

 remarks was to show that wliatever they might have sought, 

 wh\tevei' they might be seeking, or whatever they might 

 hereafter seek, they had ?(o' already attained. (Hear, hear). 

 He agreed, therefore, with Mr. Hobbs that it was desirable 

 that tliis question should be fully, carefully, and thoroughly 

 sifted ; and he felt perfectly certain that upon its being 

 well sifted and brought to such position as v/ould tend to 

 show the results of a trial were not those of chance, there 

 would be found on the part of;^the implement-makers no 

 hesitation, and no backwardness in rendering all the assist- 

 ance in theirpower (cheers). 



Mr. James Howard (Bedford) said, in considering the 

 question so ably introduced by Mr. Hobbs, it was, 

 he thought, but fair to assume that the great object 

 of the Eoyal Agricultural Society, and other similar 

 societies, in instituting trials of implements, was to 

 guide the_ farmers of this country in the selection of 

 instruments which they might use with advantage (Hear, 

 hear). He believed it might also be conceded that that 

 object had been, to some extent, sectu-ed. But as times 

 changed circumstances changed, and what was easy enough 

 in the early history of the societies to which he refeiTed 

 had become difficult as time and agricultural improvements 

 had advanced. At the first show of the Eoyal Agricultural 

 Society any intelligent farmer walking round the difierent 

 sheds was able to pick out the best implement of its class; 

 but they would all agree with him that one result of the 

 rapid strides of engineering skill, as applied to agriculture, 

 was that the difficulty of choosing was very much increased 

 (Hear, hear). Not only were the imislements marked by 

 superior excellence, but a much greater number and variety 

 were exhibited from year to year. He was very much 

 pleased that Mr. Hobbs had taken the view that he had 

 done of the trials ; and he agreed with him in almost every 

 word he had uttered. It was no new thing for implement- 

 makers to complain that the trials of the Royal Agricul- 

 tural and other societies were of too short duration to 

 test the merits of their machines. Nor were these com- 

 plaints confined to the unauccessful candidates ; and, 

 paradoxical as it might seem, he thought the loudest 

 complaints had proceeded from the successful candidates. 



(Laughter.) The successful caudidates, as a rule, uu- 

 deratood their business better than the unsuccessful, and 

 therefore their opinions were the more valuable in reference 

 to a question like this. Mr. Hobbs having raised the ques- 

 tion whether trials might be improved, he must say, and he 

 thought all present would agree with him, they might be 

 improved very greatly. He believed the proper remedy for 

 the present state of things vras to have deferred trials. 

 (Hear, hear). Such trials were, in his judgment, absolutely 

 necessary to Accomplish the object in view. They all 

 knew that although the Royal Agricultural and other 

 societies had partially succeeded in the object they had 

 in view, they had also committed a great many mistakes. 

 (Hear, hear.) Everyone who had bought many prize im- 

 plements must know that such was the case ; every imple- 

 ment maker, on looking back at the awards made at various 

 periods, could point to numerous mistakes on the part of the 

 judges. One fact was worth a dozen general remarks. He 

 remembered the deferred trial which took place at Mr. 

 Hobbs's of the reaping machines. Although that trial was 

 an extended one, deferred from the Chelmsford meeting, 

 it was by no means a satisfactory one, nor was the award 

 one which ought to have guided the farmers of this country. 

 The first prize was awarded for a reaping machine which he 

 (Mr. Howard) happened to buy — being present at the trial— 

 and which no doubt did its work best under the circumstances. 

 He took it home, and it did its work in a most efficient 

 manner upon the land on which he tried it — that was to say, 

 land as flat as the table before him ; but immediately he 

 tried it on land which had a rise of not more than one foot 

 in twenty, it proved perfectly useless. (Hear, hear.) A 

 number of farmers' bought reaping machines fashioned upon 

 the same model, and they were equally disappointed at the 

 result. There had been a trial of reaping machines since, 

 at which he was not present. A few days after, one of the 

 judges told him what award he had made. On hearing it, 

 he remarked that he knew what kmd of crop was reaped 

 — that it could not have been above four quarters per acre. 

 The judge, astonished at his guess, remarked that that was 

 in fact about the heaviest crop on which the machine had 

 been tried. He (Mr. Howard) added that he had felt per- 

 fectly satisfied of that before hearing it, for had the machine 

 been tried on a heavier crop it would have stood no chance 

 whatever. He believed that the agricultural community 

 had ceased to be guided by the prizes awarded; but 

 he maintained that if the societies did not aim at 

 doing so much, if the trials were fewer and were conducted 

 by such men as Mr. Hobbs had described, he (Mr. Howard) 

 did not know where they were to find them (laughter) ; 

 public confidence would be regained, and the change 

 would be very advantageous to the agriculture of this 

 country. He was inclined to the opinion that there 

 should be much fuller and more elaborate reports with re- 

 gard to the various machines that were tested. (Hear, 

 hear.) The present system was very defective. The judges 

 picked out some one machine, no matter whether it were a 

 new or an old one, and pronounced that the best; and 

 that for months was all the world knew about it. Now, 

 he maintained that that was not the best mode of pro- 

 ceeding. He would, by way of illustration, refer to 

 the case of steam cultivators or steam ploughs. 

 He would suppose that three or four of such machines 

 were brought forward for inspection and trial. The judges 

 found that in one case with the apparatus employed they 

 could plough or cultivate six or seven acres of land per day 

 with an ordinary eight-horse engine ; that in another case 

 they could cultivate from ten to twelve acres of land with a 



