258 The Development of Agricultural Machinery. 
springs of action, there existed in this country a number of 
mechanicians who were engaged in making ploughs, harrows, 
and other simple agricultural tools. For them, the rise of the 
Royal Agricultural Society of England constituted a profound 
change of " environment," and it is interesting, not only to 
observe the early ploughwright coming first under the influence 
of the Society's Shows, but to note the modification of that 
influence itself which resulted from the reaction of the crafts- 
man upon the Society. 
The implements shown at the Society's first meeting at Oxford 
in 1839 were, for the most part, " crude, cumbrous, and ill-exe- 
cuted machines, the work of village plough wrights and hedge-side 
carpenters" (Parkes, Liverpool Report, 1841) : men who followed 
the rule of thumb, knowing nothing of the rule of three, isolated 
from their fellow-craftsmen, and so dependent each on his own 
initiative, that Kent hardly knew how to turn a furrow with a 
plough of Suffolk make. Such as these pioneers were, however, 
— twenty-three in number, and including among them Ransome, 
Garrett, and Howard — they picked each other's brains for the 
first time in 1839, and to such good purpose that, three years 
afterwards, the Society's engineer reported as follows : — " The 
manufacture, even of the commoner implements, has already, to 
a great extent, passed out of the hands of the village plough- 
wright and hedge-side carpenter, and become transferred to 
makers possessed of great intelligence, skill, and capital, while 
examples are not wanting in the higher classes of machinery to 
show that the fourth important object for which the Society 
was incorporated is to some extent fulfilled — viz. to encourage 
men of science in their attention to the improvement of agri- 
cultural machinery " (Parkes, Liverpool Report, 1841). Year 
by year, as Show followed Show, this sharpening of man's face 
by man's face went on, Mr. Parkes being able to speak, as early 
as 1841, of a " vast stride " already taken in the mechanics of 
agriculture, a stride which he attributed to the yearly " con- 
gregating together of agriculturists and mechanicians from all 
parts of the Empire." 
The Prize System, it is true, existed from the first, but its 
influence upon improvements was, at that time, insignificant. 
Only five pounds, one geld and three silver medals were 
awarded to implements at Oxford in 1839, the whole being 
equal in value to one and a half per cent, of the money then 
given away ! No money, and only seven medals, were awarded 
to implements at Cambridge in 1840, and trials were, as yet, 
unknown. A rough dynamometer was, indeed, applied to 
ploughs, and only to ploughs, in 1811 and in subsequent years, 
