20 
FIFTY YEARS' PROGRESS OF BRITISH 
AGRICULTURE. 
[Twenty-five years ago, Sir Harry Thompson summed up in the 
pages of this Journal tin progress which agriculture had made 
during the quarter of a century which had then elapsed since 
the foundation of the Royal Agricultural Society. At the pre- 
sent moment, when the Society has just completed its fiftieth 
year of corporate existence, there are obvious advantages in 
recording in these pages a concise general survey of the changes 
which have taken place in the farming conditions of the country 
during a half-century of unexampled importance both to the 
agricultural community and the nation at large. As no one could 
possibly speak with so much authority on this subject as Sir 
James Caird, the Society is fortunate in having obtained his 
ready and cordial consent to revise for the purposes of the Journal 
his history of agricultural progress during the present reign. — Ed.] 
For some years previous to the establishment of the Royal 
Agricultural Society, the prices of agricultural produce had been 
comparatively low, chiefly from a succession of seasons favour- 
able to the wheat crop. The importation of foreign corn was 
then extremely small, and that of meat and dairy produce 
almost nothing. The Royal Agricultural Society of England 
was founded, as the English Agricultural Society, in 1838; 
so that the whole life and progress of that society has been 
co-existent with Her Majesty's reign. The question of Free 
Trade had not arisen. And, for seven years longer, the potato, 
the chief food reliance of the poorest of the agricultural class in 
Ireland and the north-west of Europe, continued sound. 
The subjects which then seemed of chief interest to British 
agriculture are shown by the proceedings of the Committee of 
the English Agricultural Society soon after its formation in 
May I808. Arrangements were made by them for annual 
agricultural shows of farm animals, implements of husbandry, 
and specimens of agricultural produce. Correspondence with 
similar societies at home and abroad was arranged. A veterinary 
school was projected. Prizes were offered for essays on agri- 
cultural subjects, and for experiments with manures. Reports 
were invited on the comparative advantages of different imple- 
ments, on the management of water-meadows, on the best 
varieties of wheat for cultivation, on the keep of farm horses, 
on stall feeding of cattle, on rotation of crops, on subsoil and 
trench ploughing, and on the best system of land drainage. The 
first volume of the Journal of the Society was completed in 1840, 
most of tho contributors to which — Philip Pusey, the leading 
