18 TRANSACTIONS. 



agriculture that enables twenty millions of people to subsist in 

 Great Britain on the same soil, which in J 780 sustained only- 

 nine mil ions. The Highland Agricultural Society, in Scot- 

 land, especially, has done wonders, when we consider that no 

 country is more bleak and barren in Europe ; yet it now has 

 reached a very high state of agricultural prosperity, and chiefly 

 through the influence of that Society, now seventy-six years 

 old. The average produce of wheat in the, whole of Great 

 Britain was formerly but nine bushels to the acre ; but it is 

 now more than 19 bushels ; and in several counties of England 

 and Scotland, the average is not less than 50 bushels. 



" On the continent," says a traveller, " especially in Ger- 

 many, their annual fairs bring together the farmers and peas- 

 ants of all the surrounding country, when their ambition and 

 industry are stimulated by a variety of fetes and the distribu- 

 tion of prizes to successful competitors, and whilst princes, 

 dukes, and barons are engaged in awarding prizes to those who 

 have been most successful in the cultivation of grains and cat- 

 tle, their lovely wives are occupied in a humble but much more 

 lovely scene, in complimenting and distributing premiums to 

 the industrious housewife, for her fine specimens of fruit, her 

 butter and cheese, her linen clothes, weaving, knitting, and 

 Other manufactures. I have no doubt I shall be ridiculed for 

 my want of taste, when I state, that to me the Grand Duchess 

 of Baden, presenting a silver cup to a peasant girl, before an 

 assembled crowd of farmers and nobility, for the finest speci- 

 men of manufactured gloves, was a more interesting sight than 

 that of the gay queen Victoria, racing through St. James' Park, 

 with fifty fools at her heels, striving not to be distanced by 

 their lovely mistress." — (^Southern Cabinet for Jan., 1840, 

 p. 4.) 



In this country, we are beginning to realize similar fruits 

 from enlightened agriculture, under the fostering care of Ag- 

 ricultural Societies. Many a noble farm in New England, 

 with its produce doubled or trebled within a few years, testi- 

 fies to their influence. Our farmers have been fearful that 

 they could not compete with the products of the West and 



