at the Norwich Meeting, 1849. 531 



farmer is exposed to constantly increasing competition, and it 

 becomes liim to take a rational survey of the means which he pos- 

 sesses for meeting it, and to consider in what way he can make 

 the most of the resources within his reach. Whilst making such 

 an estimate of his position, he can scarcely fail to perceive that 

 the abundance of British capital and the superiority of British 

 machinery are important items in his favour when called upon to 

 contend against the superior climate of other corn-growing coun- 

 tries ; and without mooting the question whether or no these alone 

 will enable him to maintain his position, it is yet sufficiently clear 

 that if he neglects these advantages he cannot retain the pro- 

 minent place he now occupies amongst the leaders of the agricul- 

 tural world. It would be foreign to the subject of the present 

 report to offer any suggestions respecting the use of additional 

 capital, except in so far as it applies to increasing the use of 

 machinery for farming purposes ; and when considering this point, 

 the question immediately arises. In what does excellence in 

 machinery consist ? In any other branch of industry it would 

 not be necessary to ask this question, as not only are all the 

 manufacturing community aware that their profit, nay, their 

 living depends on obtaining any desired result with the smallest 

 possible amount of motive power, but they are provided with 

 tests by which any undue expenditure of force would be at 

 once detected. This, however, is quite out of the farmer's reach, 

 and it is therefore necessary to tell him that a machine which 

 makes good work may nevertheless be a bad machine, a wasteful 

 one that is — which it is very expensive for him to use. This is 

 precisely the case where a great national society may confer a 

 great national benefit, by stepping in between the manufacturer 

 and the public, and telling the former that if he wishes for the 

 Society's award of merit, he must submit to the most searching 

 test which scientific engineers can devise, one which shall enable 

 the Society to point out those cases where a machine requires the 

 expenditure of two bushels of corn (in horse -keep) or two bushels 

 of coal (for steam-power) , where only one ought to have done the 

 work. Many will doubtless think it a hopeless task to introduce 

 such accuracy into the trials of farming implements, but it will be 

 sufficient to refer them to what took place at Norwich, where, 

 with Mr. Amos's excellent arrangements and ingenious apparatus, 

 great progress was made in convincing even the makers them- 

 selves of the feasibility and advantage of the new mode of trial. 

 One exhibitor of a threshing-machine (a winner, too, of more 

 than one important prize at this meeting) publicly confessed that 

 he did not know how a threshing-machine ought to be made 

 until he had witnessed the trial on that occasion. In the case 

 also of drain- tile machines, the merits of two were very nearly 



