JOURNAL 
OF THE 
ROYAL AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY 
OF ENGLAND. 
THE DEVELOPMENT OF AGRICULTURAL 
MACHINERY. 
The doctrine of evolution, with its now admitted application to 
every subject of human inquiry, would compel a writer, even 
upon farm machinery, to throw at least a glance backward 
towards the origin of the implements whose story he wished to 
tell, just as the biologist concerned with the life-history of any 
given group of organisms, living or fossil, must say something 
of its development, under penalty of having, otherwise, brought 
too little of the " dry light " of science properly to illuminate 
his subject. The " enchainment of things," as George Eliot 
happily called the indissoluble nexus between acts and their 
consequences, connects the past and present of reaping and 
threshing machines by links of similar character to those which 
bind together the seemingly scattered deeds of man, and heredity 
dominates equally the humblest human works and most com- 
plex human ways. 
Viewed from this standpoint, the Eoyal Agricultural Society 
of England may, itself, be considered as a product of evolution, 
born of that desire for associated action whose very existence 
differentiates this century so strongly from the last, and which, 
within fifty years, has become undisputed king of the whole 
realm of material progress. Long, however, before men began 
thus to crystallise around societies, and seek in them new 
VOL. I. T. S. — 2 S 
