418 Report on the Exhibition and Trial of ImiiJemenis 



and-thlrtj acres for these trials can hardly be called with pro- 

 priety the inducement to the Society to accept the offer of such a 

 spot, because there was no other choice ; but it is to be hoped 

 that, in all future negotiations with the towns or localities at 

 which the summer meetings shall be held, the very ample area 

 required for this class of trials will be regarded as a -preliminary 

 condition. Something of the same kind of difficulty, coupled, 

 however, with the opposite disadvantage of soaking weather, 

 occurred at Carlisle, where Mr. Usher's steam-plough failed to 

 obtain a field-trial from inability to make its way from the show- 

 yard, which the rule of the Society requires to be the head- 

 quarters of every implement, whether for trial or exhibition. 



It is quite true, as the judges remark in their Report, that 

 a steam-plough ought to be able to convey itself from the farm- 

 steading to the field ; but it unfortunately happens that a show- 

 yard improvised in the immediate environs of a large town is as 

 much the opposite as can well be conceived in all its incidentals, 

 of a farmstoading, which (inconvenient as their position often is) 

 is yet the recognised point to which the roads of the farm con- 

 verge. The narrow zigzag of two acute angles, only a few yards 

 from each other, which formed the only road to fame in steam- 

 ploughing at Salisbury, afforded, indeed, a striking opportunity 

 for exhibiting the admirable docility and power of Mr. Boydell's 

 traction-engine, which reached the trial-ground in ten minutes 

 from the yard ; but the same acclivity which compelled Mr. Fowler 

 to throw himself on the resources of the Society to draw up his 

 ponderous seccmd engine, boiler-full, and not steaming, with eight 

 of their most powerful horses, and which broke the breastplate 

 of Mr. Collinson Hall's engine at the second angle of the zigzag, 

 after successfully passing the first, formed a sort of preliminary 

 struggle neither necessary nor desirable as an introduction to the 

 sufficiently arduous experiments in steam-ploughing. Still the 

 judges and stewards had no choice in the matter, and it is only to 

 be hoped that they may never be called upon to exercise their 

 duties under like circumstances again. To the important subject 

 of the trial itself further reference will be made in the order in 

 which the Reports of the judges are arranged, following as nearly 

 as I have been able the same plan, subordinately, as that which 

 now governs the triennial division. 



The trials of Drills were of a most laborious, not to say tedious, 

 character, outlasting, from their great number and minute shades 

 of variety, all the other trials ; and too much credit can hardly be 

 given to the indefatigable perseverance of the judges in this 

 branch, Mr. Caldwell and Mr. ])ruce jun. It seems to mark 

 a stage advanced far on the road to perfection when anything 

 new in the construction of an implement has begun to gene- 



