LOCAL AGRICULTURAL SOCIETIES 209 



discussed and recommended. Cattle-shows, wool-fairs, ploughing- 

 matches were held in various parts of the country. Counties, like 

 Durham, Northumberland, Cheshire, and Leicestershire, started 

 experimental farms. The short-lived Society of " Improvers in 

 the Ivnowledge of Agriculture " had been formed in 1723. The 

 Society for the " Encouragement of Ai'ts, Manufactures and Com- 

 merce " was instituted in London in 1754. Other associations, 

 more exclusively agricultural, speedily followed. The Bath and 

 West of England Society was founded in 1777, the Highland Society 

 in 1784, the Smithfield Club in 1798. The creation of the Board of 

 Agriculture in 1793 has been already mentioned. The Farmers' 

 Club was established in 1793. The first number of the Farmer's 

 Magazine, which appeared in January, 1800, rapidly passed through 

 five editions. Provincial societies multiphed. At Lewes, in 1772, 

 Lord Sheffield had established a Society for the " Encouragement 

 of Agriculture, Manufacture and Industry " ; but it does not seem 

 to have survived the war with France and the United States. Few 

 counties were without their organisations for the promotion of 

 agricultural improvement. One of the first was estabhshed at 

 Odiham in Hampshire. Kent had its agricultural society at 

 Canterbury (1793) and the Kentish Society at Maidstone. In 

 CornwaU (1793), Berkshii'e (1794), Shropshire (1790), at Shifnal and 

 at Draji^on in Leicestershire (1794), in Herefordshire (1797), pro- 

 vincial societies were founded. The West Riding of Yorkshire had 

 its society at Sheffield, Lancashire at Manchester, Worcestershire 

 at Evesham (1792), Huntingdonshire at Kimbolton. In Northamp- 

 tonshire similar associations were formed at Peterborough, Welling- 

 borough and Lamport. The list might be enlarged. But, though 

 many of these societies were short-lived, their foundation illustrates 

 the new spirit which animated farming at the close of the eighteenth 

 century. 



a dead letter. The establishment of uniformity was difficult. In 1758 a 

 Parliamentary Committee reported that there were in use in England four 

 different legal measures of capacity, the respective quantities being in the 

 case of the bushel 2124, 2150, 2168, and 2240 cubic inches. The widest 

 differences existed between the weights and measures of the same county. 

 Thus in Cornwall, for instance, wheat was sold either by the double Win- 

 chester of 16 gallons or the treble Winchester of 24 gallons ; oats were sold 

 in the eastern district by the hogshead of 9 W^inchesters, in the west by a 

 double Winchester of 17 gallons ; a bushel of seed-wheat bought from a 

 western farmer ran short of the eastern measure by between one and two 

 gallons. Butter was sold at 18 oz. to the pound. The customary perch was 

 18 feet in length instead of the statutory length of 16^ feet. 



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