THE ROYAL AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY 359 



organising shows, and encouraging discoveries ; others met rather for 

 the consumption of meat and drink than for the discussion of their 

 production. The Board of Agriculture had estabhshed a strong 

 claim to the gratitude of farmers by providing Davy's lectures on 

 agricultural chemistry in 1803-13. But its dissolution in 1822 had 

 been one of the symptoms of distress. The foundation of the Royal 

 Agricultural Society^ of. England, projected in 1837, estabhshed in 

 1838, and incorporated by Royal Charter in 1840, with Queen 

 Victoria as patron, was at once a sign of revival and a powerful 

 agent in restoring prosperity. 



Among the founders of the Society were many of the best-known 

 landowners and most practical agriculturists of the day. Their 

 association in a common cause carried weight and authority through- 

 out the whole country. Their recognition of their territorial duties 

 and enthusiasm for the general advancement of agriculture were 

 communicated to others, and commanded success by their sincerity. 

 The Society met a recognised want in the right way. It proclaimed 

 the alliance between practical farmers and men both of capital and 

 of science ; it indicated the directions in which agriculture was 

 destined to advance. The wise exclusion of pohtics, though for a 

 moment it threatened to endanger the existence of the new institu- 

 tion, eventually secured it the support of men of every shade of 

 pohtical opinion. By the comprehensiveness, elasticity, and fore- 

 sight, with which its hnes of development were traced, it has been 

 enabled to meet the varying needs of seventy years of change. It 

 has encouraged practical farming on scientific principles ; it has also 

 encouraged. agricultural science to proceed on practical Hnes. It has 

 by premiums and pecuniary aid promoted discovery and invention ; 

 by its shows it has fostered competition, stimulated enterprise, and 

 created a standard of the best possible results, methods, processes, 

 and materials in British agriculture. Its Journal disseminated the 

 latest results of scientific research at home and abroad, as well as 

 the last lessons of practical experience. In its pages will be found 

 the truest picture of the history of farmmg in the reign of Queen 

 Victoria. Startmg as it did under peculiarly favourable circum- 

 stances, and supported by Avriters like Philip Pusey and Chandos 

 Wren-Hoskyns, it commanded the pens of masters in the lost art of 

 agricultural literature — men who wrote with the knowledge of 

 specialists and with the forcible simplicity of practical men of the 

 world. Without exaggeration it may be said that the genera l 



