398 CORRESPONDING SOCIETIES. 



we know were unfamiliar to Smith, and it is apparent that he depended upon 

 them for the extent of the outcrops of the different beds, his masterly geological 

 mind enabling him to translate ' limestone soil,' ' marl,' and other terms to 

 their proper horizons. 



In these circumstances it seems desirable briefly to refer to these old soil 



surveys. 



In the ' Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society ' for 1898 Sir Ernest Clarke 

 prints an account of ' The Board of Agriculture, 1793-1822,' in which he gives 

 some information of value as to the dates of the appearance of the county 

 surveys. He states that ' Sinclair commenced on too ambitious a scale with the 

 comparatively small funds at his disposal.' Sir John's original estimate of the 

 funds necessary for the Board's support had been 10,000 guineas per annum, 

 which was reduced by degrees to 3,000/., the actual sum annually voted by 

 Parliament. But to a man of Sinclair's temperament it was impossible to 

 ' hasten slowly,' and therefore the initial efforts of the Board were directed 

 with an imnetuosity for which an annual income of 10,500?. would not have 

 been excessive. By the middle of the ensuing year, 1794, the whole of the 

 kingdom had been divided into districts and assigned to different ' Surveyors,' 

 and by July 1795 nearly all their reports had been received. They were then 

 issued as what Sinclair called ' printed manuscripts,' in quarto size, with large 

 margins for the corrections and additions of practical agriculturists. The plan 

 was not a bad one, but it did not answer the expectations formed of it. This 

 is not surprising when we consider the undue haste and bad iiidgment displayed 

 by the President in the choice of the men employed. ' The result was the 

 production of a huge mass of ill-digested articles of the most varying degrees 

 of merit, from valuable and exhaustive monographs in a few isolated instances 

 to scrappy memoranda of but a few pages in others, according to the writers' 

 ability and thoroughness, or lack of these qualities. Though ostensibly drawn 

 up for private circulation, the reports were entered at Stationers' Hall, and 

 may be regarded as practicallv published documents. The issue of such un- 

 reliable literature brought the Board at once into bad repute, and this unpopu- 

 larity was accentuated by a belief, groundless it ie true, that the inquiries of 

 the surveyors were intended to lead to increased taxation. Another circum- 

 stance which added to the Board's difficulties was the hostilitv of the Church, 

 provoked bv an attempt to obtain information on the subject of tithes. Sinclair 

 had derived much help from the Scottish clergy in the preparation of his 

 "Statistical Account" of Scotland, and he now hoped similarly to enlist the 

 co-operation of the English clergy. But the mention of the vexed question of 

 tithes excited their suspicion, and even led to an intimation by the Archbishop 

 of Canterbury to Pitt, that any interference with this matter would alienate 

 the support of the Church from the Government.' 



' In view of the fact that every now and then appear in booksellers' cata- 

 logues what are described as "large paper" copies of the reports to the Board 

 of Agriculture on particular counties, it appears necessary to point out that 

 these are the oricinal imnerPect drafts on ouarto paper, circulated for correction 

 amongst agriculturists of the district in the manner above described, and that 

 the final reports were all printed (in most cases years after the original drafts 

 and by different authors) in octavo size.' 



Sir Ernest then supplies the following particulars of the publication of the 

 Aericultnral Reports, which I give here for the use of the delegates; though 

 this list is not quite coiTect, my own collection containing a number of editions 

 not here recorded : 



