266 The Development of Agricultural Machinery. 
makers were well satisfied with the positions they had attained 
at, or near, the " top of the tree," whence they were feverishly 
anxious neither to be dislodged by obscure talent, nor (which 
they feared much more) relegated " nowhere " by running 
second in a neck-to-neck race with some already important and 
dreaded competitor. Hence, at the instance of makers, arose the 
introduction of triennial trials, already alluded to, which gave 
breathing-time alike to jaded inventors and hurried Examiners. 
The three years' course jogged comfortably along from 1856 
to 1860, when the fatted calves of the implement-yard revolted, 
under a flag of rather vague design, against the then adminis- 
tration of the Prize System. Most of the great makers absented 
themselves from the Canterbury Show in 1860, but returned to 
their tents at Leeds in 1861, after which date trials became, for 
a time, quadrennial. Neglecting a tiny emeute which occurred 
at Taunton in 1875, no further secession, either from trials or 
show-ground, took place until steam-engines were tried at New- 
castle in 1887, when, as every one remembers, all the "great" 
engine-makers abstained from competition, although making 
their usual exhibition in the yard. Such are the " lovers' 
quarrels " that have occurred between the Society and makers, 
and it is no slight testimonial to the Prize System that such a 
possible causa teterrima belli should have done so little mischief. 
It is an interesting fact that certain periods in the history 
of the Society are marked each by special solicitude for some 
particular agricultural implement or operation, a solicitude 
which has often risen to intense and, sometimes, prolonged 
excitement. If mechanical ideas are born from some happy 
union of Science and Practice, it is none the less true that their 
development depends very largely on nursing. The Society has, 
certainly, never procured the origination of any implement, for 
the germs of nearly all the agricultural machines of to-day 
existed before it came into being, and its functions, if *for no 
other reason, have been limited to the nurture of inventions. 
But to fasten now upon one, now upon another, pregnant idea 
and to " worry " it, so to speak, until it has yielded all the wealth 
that can be wrung from it, is a very important function indeed, 
and, from this point of view, the Society may be almost said to 
have " invented " certain important agricultural machines. A 
few words may not be thrown away in describing some of the 
more important " storm-centres " around which successive hurri- 
canes of interest have, at various times, gyrated. 
Mr. Pusey's epoch-making paper upon the " Condition of 
Agriculture in England in 1839," speaks of the plough, the 
