12 
Agricultural Progress and 
drought or the wet be excessive, it is desirable to have a variety 
of weather, as it gives the opportunity at one time of rewarding 
an implement which makes good work on hard dry land, and on 
another occasion one which is not stopped by a few showers of rain. 
Decisions arrived at under alternations of drought and wet can 
be commended with all the more confidence to practical farmers, 
with whom weather difficulties are the ordinary conditions of 
cvery-day life. 
The second objection, founded on the shortness of the time, is 
a more grave one. It may be readily conceded that when a class 
is under trial in which the entries are numerous and where 
several possess nearly equal merit, it is difficult to test each one 
so thoroughly as to give the judges perfect confidence in the cor- 
rectness of their awards. It will also occasionally happen in 
bad weather or at the close of a hard day's Avprk that trials are 
more hurried than is desirable. But whilst freely admitting that 
trials of implements are not perfect or infallible, we entirely deny 
that this is sufficient reason for giving them up. The question 
is not, Do the judges ever make a mistake? but, Are they not 
right in a large majority of instances? and that this is the case 
is sufficiently proven by the constantly increasing number of 
those who are guided in their purchases by the judges' de- 
cisions. 
The third objection is of a totally different character : it is 
grounded on what Mr. Morton calls the " excessive character of 
the prize system." To use his own words, " the prizeman wins, 
the rest are nowhere." Here again it must be admitted that it 
not unfrequently happens that two implements are so equal in 
their performances as to make it difficult to decide between them ; 
yet one only receives the prize for that season. This is an un- 
doubted hardship to the maker of the losing implement, though 
frequently much mitigated by the award of a medal or special 
commendation by the judges. It is also true that when imple- 
ments are nearly equal, the maker who has the cleverest ploughman 
or drillman will probably win. The state of the ground, too, may 
on some particular occasion give the preference to an implement 
which in an average season would have been beaten by one or 
more of its now distanced competitors. These are the inevitable 
drawbacks to any competitive system. Precisely the same diffi- 
culties occur in horse-racing. Two horses run neck and neck 
for the Derby'; ..but, on passing the judge's stand, one jockey is 
strong enough or clever enough to lift his horse bodily and wins 
by a nose. No one remembers that the second horse ran the race 
in precisely the same time as the first ; but the three inches won 
by the jockey bring thousands to the fortunate owner, and hand 
down the horse's name to posterity as a Derby winner. Again, 
