THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE, 



495 



A WEDNESDAY AT THE ROYAL AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY'S ROOMS. 



[from a correspondent.] 



It may not be generally known, aa the advertisements aay, 

 that on every Wednesday of the mouth, except the first, 

 during the mouths that the Council of the Royal Agricultural 

 Society hold their meetings, at noon, ordinary subscribers are 

 admitted to the sacred precincts of Haaover-square, and per- 

 mitted to read short papers, make speeches, and ask questions 

 on agricultural questions, just as at the meetings of the Geo- 

 graphical, the Statistical, the Institution of Engineers or of 

 Architects the subjects to which those associations direct their 

 special attention are described and discussed ; but with this 

 important difference — all other learned or scientific or literary 

 societies holding discussion meetings, either have recorded in 

 shorthand notes and periodically publish reports in their trans- 

 actions, or admit the press. Many societies, including some 

 of the most flourishing and influential, do both. They allow 

 the press to make public reports of discussions of popular in- 

 terest, and they supply their members with autlientic records, 

 in a convenient shape for binding, of those discussions suf- 

 ficiently important to be of permanent interest. The Council 

 of the Royal Agricultural Society adopts neither of these 

 plans ; in fact, it adopts no plan at all for its Wednes- 

 day Meetings, and no rule except the rule of rigidly excluding 

 reporters. The agricultural papers are seldom favoured with 

 any notice of the subjects likely to come on for discussion. 

 The result may easily be anticipated : the meetings generally 

 consist of the Members of Council detained by committee 

 duties, two or three officials, and a stray member or two whom 

 accident or acquaintance for the man about to read a paper 

 draws to Hanover- square. Nine out of ten of these Wednes- 

 day meetings closely resemble the Protestant Church in 

 Ireland, where Dean Swift began the service with "Dearly 

 beloved Roger"; and of which Sydney Smith told the story 

 beginning with, " Please your reverence she's sick " 



Perhaps the last open weekly meeting in May was as 

 fair a specimen as could be found of an unusually lively day 

 at Hanover Square. A little before twelve o'clock Members 

 of the Council began to descend the stairs, and depart in evi- 

 dent haste and trepidation ; for there was a rumour that Mr. 

 Edwin Chadwick, with a large bundle of papers and Italian 

 rye-grass, was waiting in the secretary's rooia for the moment 

 when he. might use his privilege and repeat, for the hundredth 

 time, his story of the virtues of liquid manure and the value of 

 sewage. The Journal Committee were amongst the first to 

 vanish ; Mr. Thompson was followed by Mr. Wrenn Hoskyns, 

 and Sir J. B. Johnstone ; Sir Watkin W. Wynn mounted his 

 weight-carrier, and paced away with the grim satisfaction 

 of a man who has " escaped ;" others less known to fame 

 followed ; and when the summons of the door-keeper admitted 

 us to the council-chamber there was Lord Berners in the 

 chair, supported, of course, by Mr. Raymond Barker, looking 

 fresher and more persevering than ever; there was the secre- 

 tary at his desk, and the editor of the Journal at his post ; 

 Mr. Brandreth Gibbs, the honorary manager of the Society ; 

 Professor Symonds, the veferinary-aurgeon ; Mr. Fisher 

 Hobbs, who was waiting for a committee, which followed the 

 discussion ; the Earl of Essex, who has a sewage-manure farm; 

 Mr. Barrow, M.P., who has lately resigned a seat in the 

 Coiincil, for which he is much better qualified than some who 



remain ; Mr. Holland, and Lord Cathcart, who have recently 

 been elected on the Council; Mr. Chadwick, the Attorney- 

 General of Liquid Manure, and his witness. Mr. Blackburn; 

 together with Mr. Dickenson, formerly of Wdlesden, and now 

 of New Park, who imagines he invented Italian rye-grass. 



Mr. Chadwick, wise in his generation, had his paper in 

 print, ready to be issued as a pamphlet, with all the authority 

 of a " Paper read before the Royal Agricultural Society." 

 The novelty of the paper consisted in the one circumstance 

 that Mr. Chadwick had, at the end of seventeen years, found 

 a new witness to the extravagant value he puts on his univer- 

 sal medicine for agricultural success. 



At least seventeen years ago experimental agriculturista 

 found that in England, as well as under the sun of It«ly, the 

 application of liquid manure would produce greater crops of 

 grass thau any other process, especially if applied immediately 

 after cutting. And it was also found that the heaviest crops 

 of all could be grown from Italian ryegrass, then recently in- 

 troduced into the English seed market by Messrs. Lawaons, 

 of Edinburgh. About that time, bevies of agriculturists used 

 to resort to Willesden, to see the large crops of Italian rye- 

 grass grown by Mr, Dickenson, the jobmaster, for the use of 

 his horses, without regard to the cost of horse or men's labour, 

 just as boys grow mustard and cress on a sponge. Italian 

 ryegrass has been established as one of the useful seed crops 

 of the British farmer. An account of the steps by which 

 it became popularized will be found in the report 

 of a paper read at the Central Farmers' Club by Mr, Chalmers 

 Morton, in March, 1855. Thus seventeen years ago we 

 arrived at this agricultural fact — that if you have a con- 

 sumption, say by a dairy or stable of horses, for Italian rye- 

 grass, and can economically collect and apply liquid manure 

 or wash ia solid portable manure, you may thus obtain heavier 

 and more frequent green crops thau in any other manner. 

 And in the present day, after tens of thousands of pounds 

 have been spent on experiments on the largest scale, we have 

 not got any further. But on these simple facts, Mr. Edwi'n 

 Chadwick, then occupying an influential official position, 

 founded a school of agricultural reformers, consisting, it must 

 be admitted, entirely of amateurs. Tbis school — like that 

 founded by the late Mr. Morrison, President of the Pill Col- 

 lege of Health — had only two axioms, and both of remarkable 

 simplicity ; the diflference being, that Morrison advertised at 

 his own expense, while the Board of Health advertised its new 

 theories of agriculture in thousands of Blue Books at the ex- 

 pense of the nation. These axioms were, first, that the most 

 profitable mode of applying manure of every kind was in a 

 liquid form ; secondly, that liquid sea-age of the towns was of 

 enormous agricultural value, of a value sufficient to justify the 

 execution of costly works for its delivery in the agricultural 

 districts, and a large rent from farmers for its use. Unfortu- 

 nately for Mr Chadwick's agricultural reputation, the expe- 

 rience and the experiments of seventeen years have not borne 

 out his confident theories. Capitalists have been found, 

 (arms have been piped and deluged, enormous green 

 crops have been grown, the triumphant results of 

 the new system reported far and wide in official 

 Blue Books and copied into newspapers. Mr, Chadwick 



