FIFTY YEARS OF A SHOWMAN'S LIFE 



in these abnormal times, when service for Bang 

 and country has claimed many competent pen- 

 men, and when agriculture, so far as the con- 

 ditions of its pursuit are concerned, is very much 

 in a state of flux, the Journal still goes on, though 

 its issue is attended with more difficulty and 

 expense than usual. The Society, however, has 

 always borne in mind the advice tendered to it 

 by Arthur Young, one of its earliest supporters : 



" By all means publish your transactions ; what 

 you do is not for your own district alone, but for a 

 much larger sphere. A Society that does not pub- 

 lish its transactions may be of a partial, limited 

 and confined utility, but can never diffuse the 

 knowledge it rewards, nor render the successful 

 efforts the means of general improvement." 



The literature, as well as the history, of agri- 

 culture repeats itself, and the Society's annals 

 furnish many proofs that the burning topics of 

 to-day are but revivals of those of yesterday. 

 Like the poor, certain subjects seem to be always 

 with us, for these volumes show that a century 

 ago men's minds were occupied with regard' to 

 the potato disease, the turnip-fly, foot-rot, allot- 

 ments, tithes, and other matters that find a place 

 in the agricultural columns of to-day. Special 

 subjects, too, were threshed out in the Society's 

 publications long ago ; and even tobacco-growing 

 in England, a topic which was regarded by many 

 as possessing all the charm of novelty when it 

 was re-introduced in our own time, had its possi- 

 bilities discussed so far back as 1779, when the 

 Society's committee appointed to consider it came 

 to the conclusion that " the cultivation of that 



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