The Development of Agricultural Machinery. 259 
but it was not until 1848 that any "trials" of implements, 
properly so called, were instituted. It was not from decisions 
based upon mere inspection of their implements that the 
" pioneers " learnt anything ; they were stimulated, not by the 
Prize System, which was then an " infant, muling and puking 
in its nurse's arms," but by contact with rivals and access to 
purchasers, advantages hitherto denied them, and which were 
all the more valuable in the almost entire absence at that time 
of railway communication. 
The much-debated " Prize System " must necessai-ily be 
discussed in this paper, because it forms the most important 
factor in the new " environment " with which the Society has 
been considered as surrounding the implement maker ; but a 
certain distinction must be introduced at the threshold of the 
inquiry. It is not, here, proposed to ask what the Prize 
System has done for the Show, but what has it done for the 
improvement of agricultural machines ? So far as entries of 
implements are concerned, the Shows advanced by " leaps and 
bounds" between 1839 and 1847, a period during which there 
were no " trials," properly so called ; but implement entries 
remained stationary between 1848 and 1855 — years during 
which extraordinary efforts were made by the Society to apply 
scientific tests, annually, to every class of implement shown in 
the yard. Measured by entries of implements, the Prize Sys- 
tem, crude as it was during the first ten years of the Society's 
existence, must be considered as a magnificent success, but 
the true value of its later and scientific development cannot be 
ascertained from any statistics. This must be sought, first, in 
an intimate knowledge of the changes in practice which followed 
upon the introduction of tests ; and secondly, in the attitude 
which makers themselves assumed towards these tests as soon 
as they became scientific in character. 
No clearer head and no cleverer pen have ever considered 
and recorded the mechanical lessons of the Royal Agricultural 
Society of England's show-yard than those of the late Sir H. S. 
Thompson. Gifted with the rare power of grasping details 
while remaining interested chiefly in essentials, this gentle- 
man's, too few, reports are beacon-lights which shed a steady 
lustre over the turbid waves of multitudinous mechanical details 
in which so many strong swimmers have foundered while trying 
to do justice to their theme. He says (Norwich Report, 1849) : 
— " The Society's early shows of implements must be viewed 
chi-fly in the light of bazaars. Those who attended the 
Cambridge Meeting in 1840 will not have forgotten the brilliant 
collection of implements exhibited by the Messrs. Ransome ; 
s 2 
