424 Report on the Exhihition and Trial of Implements 



If the principle be once admitted of what may be termed the 

 seasonable trial oi the respective agricultural implements, it is hard 

 to see where it could properly end, except in the reserved trial 

 of some implement for every season, and almost every month of 

 the yeai-. Even in different implements of the same class, and that 

 • of the simplest, ploughs and harrows for instance, autumn cul- 

 tivation, when evaporation is declining, and the moisture of the 

 soil considerable, and spring tillage, when evaporation is daily on 

 the increase, might bring into use and commendation qualities of 

 an opposite character in implements of the same class — as for 

 example in the different length of mould-board suitable for 

 " breaking up " in the one case, and breaking down the soil in 

 the other. It might indeed be argued, Avith some show of 

 reason, that the present systematised arrangement having devoted 

 a particular year to each group of implements, the step is not 

 very far from the periodic to the subordinate division which the 

 different seasons suggest in the relation they bear to the implements 

 that year for trial. 1 o the great mass of visitors to the Show-yard 

 of the Royal Agricultural Society, who never see and hardly 

 know of the laborious trials occupying most of the preceding 

 week, it would certainly matter little wliether they read on the 

 label of a plough, " tried in the heavy land last Friday, ^^ or 

 " last April^^ but it would matter very considerably to the 

 judges who had to decide on the merits of the implement in its 

 ordinary circumstances of use. 



Last, and as it may prove, not least of all, comes the subject 

 of the Steam-plough trials. It is remarkable, and may be ac- 

 counted for by those who can best explain the alternations of 

 public feeling and opinion, that at Chelmsford, the year before, 

 the one expression heard on every side was, in various modes of 

 exclamation, to the effect that " at last the problem of steam- 

 culture was solved!" while at Salisbury, where the preparations 

 for this new class of trials were on a scale far larger, and twice 

 the number of competitors were actually on the field (several 

 more having been entered), the general expression was C|uite the 

 other way. Not that the interest shown, or the concourse of spec- 

 tators, was less ; but a feeling the opposite of anything like 

 sanguine expectation, or the prospect of realized results, seemed 

 to have gained ground during the lapse of the twelvemonth. 

 Whether it was that there had been time to reflect that, after all, 

 tliere was nothing really new in ploughing by steam, except 

 perhaps in the subordinate ingenuity of improved details in con- 

 necting the implement with the engine, or in turning at the head- 

 lands, or whether simply because the novelty of the thing as 

 matter of competitive trial had lost its first freshness ; the eager 

 expressions of expectation heard before, had subsided into a tone 



