The Development of Agricultural Machinery. 267 
harrow, the threshing-machine, and the turnip-cutter as the 
only implements then in common use, and goes on to say, — 
" The use of the drill-machine, by which seed is laid in regular 
rows, has lately become frequent in southern as well as in 
northern England, although it has established itself so slowly 
that, for along time, travelling machines of this kind have made 
yearly journeys from Suffolk as far as Oxfordshire for the use of 
those distant farmers by whom their services are required." 
Incredible as it sounds to modern ears, the drill was an im- 
plement* whose very function had to be explained to southern 
farmers fifty years ago. It was a travelling mechanical curiosity ! 
This was the first machine around which the interest of 
the Society " swarmed," so to speak, and that without inten- 
tion. It had offered its earliest prizes to gorse-crushers (!), 
apparently dreaming that the road to agricultural salvation lay 
over the furzy downs of half-cultivated counties, when the drill 
came and took its sympathies by storm. Between 1839 and 
1 84G, when Mr. Parkes speaks of the implement as " perfected," 
the drill simply "corralled" the agricultural world and the 
Society's members. Only four years after Mr. Pusey had told 
southern farmers what a drill was like, sixty-one of these 
machines were shown at Derby (1843), and most of the great 
reputations as drill-makers had been established. " The con- 
templation of such a display cannot but have been gratifying to 
the members of the Society, including as it did an adaptation 
of the drill to almost every species of seed and seed-crop, 
and justifying the encouragement extended by the Society to 
this pre-eminentlv important division of the agricultural art." 
(Parkes, Derby Report, 1843.) 
There followed upon the passion for drills an enthusiasm 
for draining and drainage implements, the years 1844-48 
being remarkable for great activity in this department. No- 
thing "less than a volume would suffice to satisfy the public 
appetite for knowledge on this subject," said Mr. Parkes in 
1845; and the Society's interest in drainage at this time is 
illustrated by repeated offers of large prizes to tile and pipe- 
making machines. 
"It was somewhere about 1813," says Mr. Albert Pell, in 
some diverting reminiscences of the Society's earlier Shows 
with which he has favoured the writer, " that the late Mr. Read, 
of Piccadilly, an enthusiast on drainage, and an able inventor, 
told me he had a friend in the New Road, a plumber, who 
made lead pipes by pressure through a die, and it was Mr. Read's 
opinion that the method might be adapted to the making of 
clay pipes. Shortly after this, the rumour ran through my 
