ROYAL AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY OF ENGLAND.

Daily Southern Cross, Volume V, Issue 257, 14 December 1849, Page 4

ROYAL AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY OF ENGLAND.

THE NORWICH MEETING OP JULY. The show-yard is divided into two compartments, one dedicated to the exhibition of implements, the other to that of stock, Previous to the foundation of the society very little attention had been paicl in this country to the adaptation of mechanics to the purposes of husbandry. Ironfounders, blacksmiths, and wheelwrights engrossed the trade, which was, in such unscientific hands, left in the rudest and most imperfect state. In Scotland they had managed these things much better — engineers and millwrights had placed farming machinery upon a superior and permanent footing, and under their skiU and perseverance the homesteads of the Lothians and the other highly cultivated districts north of the Tweed gradually began to assume that remarkable degree of arrangement and that happy combination of details which distinguish them beyond every other country in the world. The early exhibitions of the Royal Agricultural Sopiety contained, as might have been expected under the circumstances, a very beggarly display of implements for agricultural purposes ; but the vast resources which England possesses for excelling in manufactures of tins kind soon began to be developed by the influence of these annual shows, and by the increasing intelligence of the farming community. Implement makers in a very few years became a large, a wealthy, and a highly intelligent body, and an' extraordinary variety of instruments was produced by them adapted for the cultivation of the soil. Like all other interests suddenly created by the enterprising and inventive spirit of the age, they were at the outset greatly thwarted by their ignorance of the science to which their mechanism had to be applied, and their inventions, therefore, were rather more ingenious than useful ; but every day saw this difficulty more and more diminished, and at last, notwithstanding every obstacle, the show-yard of the sooiety now exhibits a most satisfactory approximation to that practical and economic character which forms an indispensable requisite for exhibitions of the kind. Through such impediments, not only the implement makers but the society have struggled bravely with that unyielding tenacity of purpose which is our national pride. From year to year the Implementyard has shown a remarkable increase, and from the following table it will be seen that in this department the society has shown far stronger and more vigorous signs of vitality than in that of stock ; —

There is another question connected with the exhibition of implements which jt

is of great importance to determine in a satisfactory manner, and to which allusion may be made in this letter without any impropriety. I allude to the locomotive and portable character given to farm machinery, by the desire which the manufacturers very narally feel to exhibit their productions in the show- yards of a peripatetic body. In Scotland, where agricultural improvement has been carried to its highest pitch, and where, notwithstanding all that may have been accomplished in particular districts in England, the cultivation of the soil has been most skilfully systematized, such mechanical aids as the steam-engine and thrashing-mill afford are secured by fixed machinery. The question therefore arises between these different forms of construction, and it is of great importance now, when the position of the farmers iv England must greatly depend upon the exercise of superior ingenuity and more scientific modes of culture than heretofore, when the abolition of the protective system has exposed them to a wide and formidable competition, that they should strengthen their hands from the vast mechanical resources of the kingdom, and do so in the | least expensive, the most simple, and the most effectual manner.

y ear Entries Entries of of Meeting. Locality. of Stocfe. Implements 1839 Oxford.. ...... .249...... 23 184Q Cambridge ...352 36 1841 ...„. Liverpool 319,. .,..312 1842 Bristol 510 455 1843 Derby 730 508 1844 ,.,... Southampton 57.1., .,..948 1845 ,..„. Shrewsbury,. .437 942 1846 Newcastle .,.613 785 1847 Nprthamptou 459...1.321 1848 York 724.. .1,508