The Development of Agricultural Machinery. 263 
of the trials of this pregnant period, they had an extraordinary 
effect. Based, at least, upon scientific method, they made im- 
plement makers " sit up " in a way that was entirely new to 
them. No man, now, laughed in his sleeve at the idea of 
" learning anything in the Society's show-yard," but all were 
told in tarn that which they could not learn at home, but which 
it was life or death to know, not only when they were beaten, 
but why they were beaten. There was little or no revulsion 
from the new methods by makers, certainly none by the best 
makers, who, as the writer well remembers, became eager for 
the Society's Report, and the Society's comparative figures of 
draught or duty, since they could look nowhere else for such 
aids to practice. 
Why dwell on the history of such field and other trials 
as took place between the York Meeting in 1818 and that at 
Chelmsford in 185G? It was a time of fevered action which 
only those who saw can realise. Scores of crude, or promising, 
ideas came, year by year, to the test of "weighing and measur- 
ing." As the methods of trials grew more refined and accurate, 
the slaughter of the innocents became terrible : but the survival 
of the fittest was assured, and neither gaudy paint nor plausible 
tongues could, now, induce intelligent farmers to buy anything 
until they knew what the dynamometer had to say#to the 
salesman. Thus, by a double process, which aided the thought- 
ful mechanic while it crushed the charlatan, did the new agent 
exercise a Spartan but beneficent influence throughout the 
whole field of agricultural mechanics. 
Are proofs needful ? Let the steam-engine reply for other 
classes of machinery. The case is one wherein the results of 
the Society's trials are measurable in pounds of coal and water, 
the equivalents of £ s. d., and one, too, in which the shape of 
the organism, so to speak, exhibits plasticity under the influ- 
ence of conditioned trials just as an animal does in the skilful 
breeder's hands. Did the Society ask for economy of coal ? 
The prize engine of 1849 burned 11| lb. of coal per horse- 
power per hour; that of 1850, 7^ lb.; of 1852, 4f lb. ; of 
1853, 4^ lb. ; of 1855, 3f lb. ; of 1856, 3± lb. ; of 1872, 2f 
lb.; and of 1887, 14- lb. per hour! Did the Society say, — 
You shall not overcrowd your boilers with tubes, impairing 
the durability of the tube-plate for the sake of diminishing 
consumption. There followed an ample film of wrought-iron 
between tube and tube, while the consumption diminished. Did 
the Society say, — You have made your boilers too big, and your 
engines, consequently, too heavy in the heedless pursuit of 
economy. Straightway the weight of the prize engines dimin- 
