"THOMSON, OF CULHAM " 



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fire of the immortals has descended upon them, 

 when, of course, they can do without anything 

 else to fight against the impulse which led me to 

 brandy and baccy at the Farmers' Club. 



The chairman above referred to, " Thomson, 

 of Culham," as he was usually designated, to 

 distinguish him from other Thomsons in the 

 same parts, was a notable agriculturist. He was 

 one of those shrewd, hard-headed Scotchmen who 

 came over the border in considerable numbers in 

 the first half of the last century, and who, by their 

 advanced methods, combined with practical ex- 

 perience, showed how two blades of grass could 

 be produced where only one had grown before. 

 He was a forward spirit, who had outgrown the 

 fallacy that the whole art of agriculture was 

 summed up in the axiom that " muck is the 

 mither o' corn." The canny Scot, who came 

 southward from his native wilds, was usually 

 better equipped educationally, thanks to the 

 parochial school system of the land of his birth, 

 than his agricultural brother in England, and his 

 success in life was likewise aided by an Inborn 

 thriftiness and an instinctive faculty for obtaining 

 full value for every penny laid out ; consequently 

 most of them did very well for themselves. Many 

 of them became the agents or stewards for large 

 estates, their natural capacity for getting the most 

 out of anything they were responsible for being 

 just the qualification which best appealed to 

 landowners in want of managers for their property. 

 Thomson was a remarkable instance of the value 

 of " real grit " in a man, for, although he tramped 

 it into this country with little more than the 



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