eee Sia 
92. AGRICULTURAL SOCIETIES. 
land was founded so early as 1784, and has run 
a career of distinguished splendour, and main- 
tains undoubted pre-eminence over all agricul- 
tural associations. It has effected great and 
numerous improvements throughout most of Scot- 
land; it has exalted that country, in spite of the 
poverty of its soil and the angriness of its cli- 
mate, to the first place among the agricultural 
countries of the world; it has exerted a powerful 
though indirect benign influence on England, Ire- 
land, and the whole civilized world; it possesses, 
in its museum, in its periodical shows, and in its 
constant array of wealth and talent, a series of 
the finest displays of patriotic munificence which 
ever graced the history of any mere economical 
| association; and it has produced, in the many 
volumes of its Transactions and of its Quarterly 
Journal of Agriculture, by far the most opulent 
mass of interesting, practical, and scientific in- 
formation which anywhere exists within the 
wide circle of agricultural literature—The Eng- 
lish Board of Agriculture and Internal Improve- 
ment was established in 1794; it had as its pre- 
sident Sir John Sinclair, as its first secretary 
Mr. Arthur Young, and as its patrons and direc- 
tors a very large body of the most distinguished 
men in England, including all the great officers 
of state, the two archbishops, and many of the 
nobility ; it produced, in a remarkably short 
period, seventy-two octavo volumes of reports on 
the agricultural condition of the counties of the 
empire ; it united the influence and exertions of 
men of all political parties in a series of efforts 
for the agricultural and general improvement of 
the country ; and, with a very sensible degree of 
permanent beneficial results, it aroused a large 
proportion of the farmers in most parts of Eng- 
land and Scotland to a consciousness of deficiency 
in their agricultural practices, and a conviction 
of both the desirableness and the practicability 
of great improvement.—The Royal Agricultural 
Society of England, originally called the English 
Agricultural Society, though quite recent in 
origin compared with the Highland and Agricul- 
tural Society of Scotland, has already for several 
years begun toexert nearly as powerful aninfluence 
upon England as that great institution does upon 
Scotland, and is running a course of noble rivalry 
| with it in the support of minor beneficial institu- 
tions, in the holding of great agricultural shows, 
in the stimulating of agricultural talent, and in 
the publication of a valuable course of agricultural 
periodical hterature—The Royal Dublin Society 
was incorporated for the advancement of hus- 
bandry, manufactures, and the fine arts; it at 
one time promised to arouse the sleeping energies 
of Ireland, and made a series of exertions for that 
country similar to those of the English Board of 
Agricuiture for England; it afterwards, for a 
long period, ceased to take almost any part what- 
| ever in matters connected with agriculture, yet 
had the apology, during some of that period, that 
| the interests of Irish agriculture were professedly 
AGRIMONY. 
promoted by the now-extinct Farming Society ; 
and, for some years past, it has again begun to hold 
annual exhibitions of cattle, poultry, and agricul- 
tural implements, to give premiums for the best 
specimens of these, and to offer prizes for essays 
on subjects connected with the farmer’s interest. 
—The Royal Agricultural Improvement Society 
of Ireland, but a recent institution, boasts great 
numerical strength in its members, high personal 
and official distinction in its principal support- 
ers, and comparative munificence in the contri- 
butions to its funds ; and it was founded to em- 
body all sorts of practical and scientific informa- 
tion connected with agriculture, to correspond 
with the principal agricultural societies of Bri- 
tain, continental Europe, and America, to propose 
agricultural experiments and defray such losses as 
they might occasion, to promote improvements 
in the construction of agricultural implements 
and of farm buildings and cottages, to encourage 
and direct the application of chemistry and 
other sciences to husbandry, to promote improve- 
ments in the breeds of live stock and in veter- 
inary surgery, to stimulate knowledge and neat- 
ness in the management of cottages and gar- 
dens, and to promote the comfort, the education, 
and the general welfare of small farmers and agri- 
cultural labourers. 
AGRICULTURE. See Gznrrat Intropvcttion. 
AGRICULTURIST. See Acricvnror and Far- 
MER. ( 
AGRIMONY, or Hurs-Agrimony,—botanically, 
Agrimonia. A genus of hardy and perennial 
plants of the Rose tribe, distinguished from all the 
other genera of that tribe by their having small, 
notched petals, from seven to twenty stamens, 
only two or three pistils, and these last enclosed 
in the deep tube of the calyx. The number of 
species cultivated in Great Britain is six ; and 
the total number known is nine. The most com- 
mon species, or that to which the popular name 
herb-agrimony probably belongs, Agrimonia eupa- 
tora, grows wild in most parts of England, and 
is an erect, hairy, herbaceous weed, troublesome 
in pasture grounds, and frequent by the sides of 
hedges, on the skirts of woods, and on other 
descriptions of untilled ground. Its stem is 
round, rough, nearly simple, and eighteen inches 
or two feet high; its leaves are interruptedly 
winged, with oval and coarsely serrated leaflets ; 
and its flowers are small and yellow, and grow 
alternately along the stalk, in a long row, after 
the manner of a spike, and are succeeded -by 
little rough seeds, having some resemblance to 
miniature burs. An infusion of agrimony is used 
by the peasantry of the south of England as a 
medicinal tea in feverish colds ; and various pre- 
parations of the plant are extolled by quacks and 
herbalists as replete with healing power. Agri- 
mony, say these unhesitating authorities, is car- 
minative, astringent, detergent, aperient, and 
resolvent ; a decoction of it removes obstructions 
of the liver, cures jaundice, relieves dropsy, expels 
