362 Report on the Exhibition of Implements 



The judges trust that the importance of this subject will be a 

 sufficient excuse for the space devoted to it ; they feel it to be 

 their province and duty to elicit^ for the information of the 

 Society, all such truths as the experiments committed to their 

 management may develop ; and they do not hesitate to express 

 their conviction that, if arrangements could be made at future 

 Meetings for a still greater extension of the time and means 

 allotted to the trial of field implements, previous to the declara- 

 tion of prizes, the zeal of constructors would be greatly encou- 

 raged, and the objects of the Society more rapidly and surely 

 promoted. The experience acquired by their having acted on 

 several similar occasions induces them also to recommend that 

 exhibitors be invited, as a condition of trial, to send their ploughs 

 and machines in the best state for work, so as on future occasions 

 to save the time of the judges, and to evolve more correct and 

 useful results. It is evident that the acting parts of an imple- 

 ment put into the ground for the first time, or recently painted, 

 are in a most unfavourable 'condition to fulfil one at least of the 

 purposes of a trial, viz. the determination of its draught ; and it is 

 possible that the best implement may be in the worst trim for 

 work. It is requisite too that the maker, or some authorized and 

 sufficient representative, should be present to manage his own 

 implement. Several implements, the ocular inspection of which 

 gave promise of novel merit, remained untried, or very imper- 

 fectly tried, at Bristol ; whereas others, equally novel, had their 

 principal qualifications and advantages sufficiently ascertained for 

 the judges to report upon with satisfaction to themselves and to 

 the inventors. 



The justice of these remarks will be appreciated by all who 

 witnessed the skilful management of Mason's plough by Mr. 

 John Stokes, and the perseverance of the Hon. Mr. Nugent in 

 bringing his untried subsoil-pulverizer into such working con- 

 dition as to enable the judges to prognosticate favourably of its 

 future efficiency. If the trials had produced no other result 

 than that of directing the attention of the Society to these two 

 implements in particular — of the merits of which no sound 

 opinion could have been formed had they not been practically 

 ascertained in the field — no inconsiderable advantage will have 

 been derived; but it is a matter of regret to the judges that they 

 were unable to carry out to a much greater extent, and with 

 greater precision, the objects of the Society in instituting these 

 annual tests of the advance made in the science of agricultural 

 mechanism. 



JosiAH Parkes. 



George Legard. 



R. S. Graburn. 



