EDITORIAL OBSERVATIONS. 
463 
THE MEETING OF THE ROYAL AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY 
OE ENGLAND. 
Associated as our profession necessarily is with the agri¬ 
cultural community—and the more intimate this union is 
the greater will be the reciprocal benefits—it cannot but feel 
an interest in the meetings of the different Agricultural 
Societies; and as that of England is, while we write, taking 
place, we have thought the following brief history of its be¬ 
ginning and progress, taken from a contemporary, might 
prove acceptable to our readers. 
“ During the week commencing on Monday, 15th Juty, 
the twenty-second annual meeting of the Royal Agricultural 
Society of England will be held in the capital of the West 
Riding. Up to 1828 there was no Agricultural Society of 
England. In 1733 was established in Scotland a “ society 
of improvers in the knowledge of agriculture,” whose work 
chiefly lay in “ improving and cultivating grasses and tur¬ 
nips.” In 1783 the excellent Highland Society of Scotland 
was formed, and it has been most truly stated that “ the 
epoch from 1795 to 1814 exhibits an era unexampled in the 
history of improvement in any country.” Scotch farming 
became proverbial for its goodness, cleanliness, and its profits. 
In 1779 the Bath and West of England Society was estab¬ 
lished. The success of the Highland Society, and the 
interest caused in England by its operations, led the late Earl 
Spencer to exclaim, 6 Why not one for England? * Of that 
interrogation, extorted by a pardonable feeling of envy, was 
the Royal Agricultural Society of England conceived and 
born. The society was begun in June 27, 1838, and incor¬ 
porated March 26, 1840, the royal charter being granted to 
the Dukes of Rutland, Grafton, and Sutherland, the Marquis 
of Downshire, Earl Spencer, Sir James Graham, Mr. Joseph 
Neeld, Sir Thomas Acland, and others. The first meeting 
was held at Oxford, in July, 1839, and, as far as cattle 
went, was a great success, f the fruitful mother of one-and- 
twenty more/ Next year the agricultural peripatetics went 
Cambridge, and then visited in succession Liverpool, 
Bristol, Shrewsbury, Northampton, Y"ork, Norwich, Exeter, 
Windsor, Lewes, Gloucester, Lincoln, Carlisle, Chelmsford, 
Salisbury, Chester, Warwick, and Canterbury. It was in 
