the Royal Agricultural Society. 
improvement of such Agricultural Implements as may appear to 
the Committee to deserve reward." 
In the following year (1839), the Royal Agricultural Society 
held its first Meeting at Oxford. The prizes offered were appor- 
tioned as follows: — Stock, 740/.; Seed-wheat, 100/. ; Essays, 
I '■>'</. ; whilst the amount offered for Implements (with the excep- 
tion of special prizes for a draining-plough and a gorse-crushcr, 
neither of which were competed for) was confined to the announce- 
ment, " For any new Agricultural Implement such sum as the 
Society may think proper to award ;" and a contingent interest 
in the sum of 50/. offered for Extra Stock, Implements, Roots, and 
Seeds. The value of these rather problematical offers was ascer- 
tained at the time of the Show, when the Judges awarded Five 
pounds to the prize implements, imtk one Gold and three Silver 
Medals. Estimating these medals at their cost to the Society, 
about one and a half ' per cent, of the money given away at Oxford 
was awarded to the Implement Department! 
At the Society's Cambridge Meeting in 1S40, above 1000/. 
was offered in prizes, but the Implements rather lost than gained 
ground, the special prize of 50/. for a draining-plough having 
been withdrawn, whilst the other prizes for Implements remained 
as in the Oxford prize-sheet. No money and only seven medals 
were awarded to the Implements at the Cambridge Meeting! 
The subordinate position occupied by Agricultural Machinery 
at the time of these Meetings is thus sufficiently evident ; but a 
striking corroboration of the fact is to be found in the first Essay 
read before the Society (March 13th, 1839) by that accomplished 
writer the late Mr. Pusev. The title of the paper was, ' On the 
Present State of the Science of Agriculture in England,' and no 
one was more capable than Mr. Puscy of justly estimating the 
relative importance (according to the ideas of the day) of the 
numerous subjects discussed in that valuable and exhaustive 
article.* It is curious to find that the only implements there 
alluded to were the plough .and the harrow, the turnip-siicer and 
the thrashing-machine, with the exception of the following para- 
graph on the drill, which sounds so strange in the ears of a 
farmer of the present day that it seems barely credible that it 
should have been penned by one so thoroughly conversant with 
his subject at so late a date as 183!). " The use of another 
instrument, the drill-machine, a more complicated one, by which 
the seed is laid in regular rotes, has lately become frequent in 
Southern as well as in Northern England; though it has esta- 
blished itself so sloivly, that for a long time travelling machines 
of this kind have made yearly journeips from Suffolk as far as 
* 'Journal,' vol. i. p. 1. 
