404 Report on the Trials of Implements at Cardiff. 
the malicious intent, by the possible defeat of the particular trial 
in each case. 
The Senior Steward has only, in conclusion, to offer his 
cordial thanks to his colleagues for their efficient aid, especially 
during his own unavoidable absence on other duties from the 
trials in the Show-yard ; and to unite with them in the unanimous 
expression of high acknowledgment of the skill and untiring 
labour with which, under some discouragements, the Society's 
Judges performed their duties at the Cardiff Meeting. 
XXI. — Report on the Trials of Implements at Cardiff. By C. G. 
Roberts, of Haslemere, Surrey. 
There is probably no spot in the British Islands where the need 
of an increased employment of machinery in agriculture is more 
clearly illustrated than the neighbourhood of Cardiff, this year 
chosen as the site of our great annual tournament. 
In approaching the town by rail we travelled with a young 
farmer from the vicinity of Newport, whose twelve months' ex- 
perience commenced with paying wages at 12s. a week, soon 
followed by a rise to 16s., and who yet complained that he 
could not find sufficient hands to secure his hay-crop, although 
willing to pay still higher rates. We can hardly be surprised at 
this when we remember that, at the beginning of this century, 
Cardiff, with a population of 2000, all told, was but a village 
attached to the port of Bristol, and that its recent rapid rise to 
a population of 60,000 souls has been simultaneous with much 
emigration from rural districts to foreign countries, as well as to 
the neighbouring centres of work in coal and iron. As so large 
a proportion of the urban population were once labouring in the 
fields, it is not merely an interesting, but a very serious question, 
how shall the work be properly carried on without them ? The 
true answer must be that agriculture, injuriously affected by the 
more powerful attraction of commerce and manufactures, must 
recover her equilibrium by seizing every advantage that improved 
machinery affords, while she eagerly adopts those changes in the 
conduct of her business that commercial intelligence suggests. 
The modern history of Cardiff, however, does not tell of a past 
that was, in all respects, Ijetter for farmers than the present, for 
men still living remember the time, some 45 years ago," when 
the ordinary price of meat in Cardiff was 2d. per lb., in 1840 
it was 4r/., while this year one of the most curious pieces of local 
news at the time of our visit was a public notice given by the 
