710 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION M. 
accomplish? These are the questions which I shall try to answer, or, rather, to 
which I shall attempt to indicate the answers; for to deal with them adequately 
would occupy much more time than is at our disposal to-day. 
It is not inappropriate that the relation of societies and associations to 
agriculture should occupy our attention in this town of Dundee, for here, in 
1796, there was published a work on agriculture by a prominent Forfarshire 
agriculturist, James Donaldson, in which a vigorous appeal was made for the 
establishment of societies so that a spirit of improvement might be aroused 
among farmers. Donaldson, in referring to the Reports of the Board of Agricul- 
ture, then being issued, complained that it was quite impossible to reach the 
farmer by means of such expensive*volumes. He urged, therefore, the publica- 
tion of a cheap journal, and with this the formation of county societies with 
the object of spreading far and wide the information of which Sir John Sinclair 
and Arthur Young had collected so large an amount. ‘Three years later, in 
May 1799, the Board, taking Donaldson’s hint, addressed a circular letter to 
landowners on the subject, which resulted in the formation, between the beginning 
of the century and 1815, of a number of local associations for improving agri- 
culture. 
I began the preparation of this Address with the intention of giving some 
account of the progress made in the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of 
the nineteenth centuries, when Sir John Sinclair and Arthur Young were so 
actively engaged in promoting agriculture. But, as my notes progressed, I found 
that it would be necessary to limit my remarks to a period ending with the acces- 
sion of George III. I will therefore ask you to follow me while I endeavour to 
trace the rise and progress of the Improver of Agriculture and the work of 
associations which, before the year 1760, prepared the foundation on which, in 
the second half of the eighteenth century, Sir John Sinclair and Arthur Young 
reared the superstructure of the first Board of Agriculture. While this subject 
calls for no references to my official work, I may perhaps be permitted to claim 
that it is one on which I may appropriately address you, inasmuch as the func- 
tions of the old Board closely resembled those of that Division of the present 
Board of Agriculture and Fisheries with the supervision of which I am charged. 
Although Section M meets for the first time to-day, and though Sub-sections 
for agriculture belong to recent years, agriculture, on many occasions in the 
past, has occupied a place in the discussions of the British Association. To one 
of the earliest meetings Justus von Liebig contributed a report on the state of 
organic chemistry which he subsequently republished under the title ‘ Chemistry 
in its Application to Agriculture and Physiology.’ In the dedication of this 
volume to the British Association occur these words : ‘One of the most remark- 
able features of modern times is the combination of large numbers of individuals 
representing the whole intelligence of nations for the express purpose of advancing 
Science by their united efforts, of learning its progress, and of communicating 
new discoveries.’ 
I think that Liebig’s statement, which had reference more especially to the 
sciences then occupying the attention of the members of the British Association, 
applies also to movements for promoting the study of agriculture. I can find no 
evidence that societies for the advancement of agricultural knowledge existed 
among the ancients. The question is, however, not one which I have investigated 
fully, and without further study I am not prepared to state definitely that 
such societies belong exclusively to modern times. The old Scottish writer 
‘A Lover of his Country’ states that ‘the Propagation of this useful Science 
(agriculture) was the Care, as well as the first Rise of many considerable and 
famous Societies in Athens’ : and so it may have been that centuries before 
St. Paul visited the Areopagus, the Athenians congregated on Mars Hill discussed 
questions of husbandry after the manner of Socrates, Critobulos, and Ischomachus 
in Xenophon’s ‘(iconomics.’ Indeed, if we reflect that Europe was backward 
among the continents in giving attention to husbandry; that 2,800 years before 
Christ an Emperor of China is said to have instituted a ceremony for the purpose 
of impressing on his subjects the importance and the dignity of agriculture; that 
the Egyptians had developed a Land of Goshen before the time of Joseph; that 
the trees in the ‘ paradises’ of Persia were planted by those princes skilled in 
arboriculture who are praised by Socrates, and that the treatises of Mago, the 
‘Father of Husbandry,’ were among the treasured possessions of which Carthage 
