416 Report on the Exhibition and Trial of Implements 



for comparative judgment ; the drills must be content to prove 

 in soil caked or powdered by the evaporating rays of a July sun 

 how they would open and close the channel for delivery of the 

 seed in a stiff soil in November ; the ploughs, both horse and 

 steam, must be ready at word of command to dash their shares 

 and coulters upon a forlorn hope of " steel versus flint," seven 

 inches under the hardened surface of a two years' ley. Whatever, 

 in fact, the appropriate season or necessary conditions for an 

 instrument's use, it must meet tlie peremptory assize and take its 

 trial, timely or untimely, and the judges must form the best judg- 

 ment they can upon a case that cannot be deferred, under the 

 indifferent satisfaction of knowing that the disadvantage, though 

 in appearance general, is in reality unequal. 



Still, the experience gathered year after year by the judges 

 themselves tends, more than would be readily imagined, to miti- 

 gate this inconvenience, and it is not too much to say, after a 

 four years' witness of the performance of their duties by the gen- 

 tlemen whose names are appended to the following Reports, that 

 a more liberal and judicious exercise of the care and pains, as 

 well as skill, required for accurate judgment in their often most 

 difficult tasks could hardly be exhibited. 



Tiie ti'iple classification above referred to has obviated the 

 growing inconvenience of their attention being divided among too 

 many objects wholly different and requiring different modes and 

 places of experiment ; and at the Salisbury meeting the benefits 

 of a more concentrated attention, and examination of every im- 

 plement placed under Avorking inspection, were most strikingly 

 shown.* 



* Those who read with pleasure Reports of Agricultural 

 Meetings will find no small interest in the following descriptive 

 portrait of an American Agricultural Show-yard on a truly 

 gigantic scale, held in the State of Missouri, U. S. It is extracted 

 from a letter written by the Hon. M. B. Portman. Even if 

 it did not, as 1 think, contain some very useful suggestions, worth 

 consideration on this side of the Atlantic, I could hardly resist 

 the opportune insertion of so lively and characteristic a ' Report ' 

 amongst those which I have the pleasure to place before the 

 Societv. 



C. W. H. 

 Extract of Letter, ^-c. 



St. Louis, Missouri, Oct. 2nd, 1857. 

 Now I will tell you all about tlie Agricultural Exhibition and 

 Fair. All Missouri is now here, and everybody is out at the 

 Exhibition Ground: forty-seven thousand peopU on the gi-ound at 



