JOURNAL 
OF THE 
ROYAL AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY 
OF ENGLAND. 
THE FIRST TWO COUNTRY MEETINGS 
OF THE ROYAL AGRICULTURAL 
SOCIETY: 
OXFORD, 1839 ; CAMBRIDGE, 1840. 
It is difficult for a fin de siccle chronicler to give from the 
imperfect materials at his command anything like a faithful 
picture of the earliest Country Meetings of the Society, when 
visitors from a distance had all to come to the shows by road, in 
coaches, postchaises, or their own vehicles ; when an attendance 
of 20,000 people was deemed phenomenal ; and when 247 entries 
of live stock and 54 of implements were described as consti- 
tuting a show “ on a scale of unprecedented magnitude.” The 
circumstance, however, of the Society revisiting, after an interval 
of 54 years, the place where it held its first Country Meeting as 
a chartered organisation, affords an opportunity of reproducing 
from old records some particulars as to the very earliest gather- 
ings of the Society, which may offer, perhaps, some food for 
reflection on the general advance of agricultural science, and on 
the growth of the agricultural shows which now cover the face 
of the country. 
The story of the origin of the English Agricultural Society, 
which blossomed forth two years after its establishment (in 
1838) as the Royal Agricultural Society of England, has 
already been told elsewhere, 1 and it is to be noted that from 
the very first the holding of an annual show was regarded 
1 Journal, Third Series, Vol. I., 1890, pp. 1 et scq. 
VOL. V. T. S. — 18 
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