ANNUAL MEETING. 
475 
most expensive, and there was much difficulty in finding a chan- 
nel through which to give such results to the public ; but the 
farmers of England had now that channel in the Royal Agri- 
cultural Society. It would enable them to communicate these 
facts to the world, a proof of which had been given in the volumes 
of its proceedings already published. He begged to remind his 
hearers of the fact, well stated by Mr. Pusey in the first number 
of their Journal, that Jay increasing the produce of wheat only one 
bushel an acre, they would add twenty-four millions of bushels 
to the food of the country. They should be careful in their 
selection of seed, and in their mode of making experiments. 
They had seen, in a recent number of the Society’s Journal, a 
very extraordinary instance of the importance and difference of 
yields, arising from the selection of seed wheat ? It was stated 
in a tabular form ; from which he would, however, only read one 
or two extracts. The golden drop wheat produced 46 bushels 
per acre, fine Suffolk wheat 76 bushels, but another and more 
improved description had yielded 82 bushels per acre ; and this 
was all from the same piece of land under the same treatment — 
the only difference consisting in the selection of seed. 
This great society had been instituted for the benefit of the 
labouring classes as well as the wealthier classes of agriculturists. 
Mr. Colman, in his able and instructive speech, had feelingly 
alluded to that class of the agricultural population by whose 
exertions all the others were mainly supported. He hoped that 
he had not said any thing that evening inimical to the interests 
of the labouring classes; he wished to augment their domestic 
happiness, and to raise their social position. 
Let not ambition mock their humble toil. 
Their homely joys and destiny obscure ; 
Nor grandeur hear with a disdainful smile 
The short but simple annals of the poor. 
He hoped and trusted that the society would speedily turn its 
attention to the condition of the labouring classes. Already, in 
the short time in which it had been in existence, there had issued 
from its press various papers and essays fraught with advice and 
information to that class; and the society, he knew, was most 
