436 History of the English Landed Interest. 



contributed articles to its Journal, and statesmen regarded its 

 Council as their one reliable source of agricultural information. 

 Its earliest services were the exposure of the defects of the 

 four-course rotation on clover-sick soils, its criticisms on the 

 virtues of fresh fertilisers, and its encouragement of fat- 

 stock breeding and engineering inventions. There had been 

 hitherto but few chemical institutions in the country. By 

 the agency of the University of Oxford the Royal Society 

 for the promotion of Natural Science had been founded shortly 

 after the Restoration, and one or two other learned societies 

 had come into existence in the metropolis. But, as Liebig 

 pointed out to the British Association for the Advancement of 

 Science in 1840,^ " the combination of large numbers of in- 

 dividuals representing the whole intelligence of nations, for 

 the express purpose of advancing science by their united 

 efforts of learning its progress and of communicating new 

 discoveries, was a remarkable feature of modern times " ; and 

 there is no doubt that the earlier successes of this German 

 professor were largely instrumental in bringing about the 

 institution, under the auspices of Sir James Clark, of the Royal 

 College of Chemistry in London. In the years 1842 and 1854 

 respectively the Agricultural Chemistry Association and the 

 Royal Agricultural College at Cirencester were founded in 

 England,^ while in 1844 some Mid-Lothian farmers started an 

 Agricultural Chemistry Association for Scotland, which after- 

 wards became the Highland and Agricultural Society. 



The flood of scientific knowledge thus let into the soil did 

 not really have full effect till after the repeal of the Corn 

 Laws. The progress of agriculture after the re-establishment 

 of peace, in 1814, was great, but not so great as it was from 

 1850 onwards. The invigorating effects of adversity were not 

 to be fviUy experienced by the farmer till after the withdrawal 

 of State protection in 1848. When the whole agricultural 



^ Vide the Dedication of the English Translation of his Die Chemie in 

 ihrer Amvendung auf Agricultur und Physiologie, 1840. 



'^ Loudon's establishment near Oxford, in 1810, was probablj^ the first 

 agricultural college in England, but it was so short-lived that it has 

 slipped out of posterity's memory. 



