education of the eye the value of the best live
stock, and the best agricultural machinery. Not
taught by the Council, but teaching each, the
farmers of England have realised all that was
practicable in the aims of the founders of the
Royal Society. In a word, they have been
enabled to do a good deal for themselves; and
that, in England, is the spirit of our social as
well as of our political institutions.

The first show of this great Agricultural
Society was held at Oxford in 1839, and very
curious it is to look back and compare that
initiative exhibition with those which have taken
place within the last five, or even ten years.
Business had very little to do with the Oxford
show; buying or selling, the principal feature,
the sustaining power of modern shows, was a
minor consideration. The crowds moved in an
atmosphere of enthusiasm. Amateurs in
agriculture and in stock-breeding dreamed of a time
when the farmer's pursuit would be reduced to
an exact science, to be learned from books and
lectures. The real farmers, full of useful know-
ledge in their art, and also full of prejudices,
stood a little aloof, chiefly interested in the fine
show of high-bred live stock. The list of prizes
distributed at Oxford is a curious record. In
live stock, including horned cattle, horses, sheep,
and pigs, there were only twelve classes, each of
the cattle classes being for one breed, and
obtaining five prizes. It is an example of the
difference between the possible improvements
in nature and in art, that, in 1861, at Leeds, the
greater number of prizes to the short-horn
classes were awarded to descendants from Bates's
herd, which, in 1839, at Oxford, carried off four
out of five prizes; and in the less important
herds of Devons and Herefords, we can
sometimes trace back prize winners to ancestors
equally remote. While from the date of the
Cambridge show, in 1840, Jonas Webb's South
Down sheep have for twenty-one years
maintained their position as the first of their race, by
unanimous consent of the whole agricultural
world; the revival of the taste for short-horn
cattle, the most valuable breed of any in all
countries, either as a pure breed or as a cross,
may be dated from the Oxford meeting. Our
agricultural shows produce live stock in
greater numbers, of approved breeds, and, no
doubt, the average merit is greater, but it may
be doubted whether as good individual animals
were not exhibited in each of the principal
breeds in 1840 as in 1861. If there be an
exception, it is sheep—a much more artificial
production than horned stock. With respect to
agricultural implements and machinery, the
result of twenty-two years of commercial activity
has been more distinct. Pedigree, one of the
highest merits in an animal, has no part in the
value of a machine. At Oxford, the arrival of
sections of machinery and implements from a
great Ipswich manufacturer, made a sensation
and earned a gold medal. The collection was
sent in waggons for the greater part of the
distance by road. A long paragraph of the report
is devoted to a description of a chaff-cutting-
machine—a machine which at the present day is
as common as a roasting-jack. Mention was made
of the implements of manufacturers who have
since attained an European reputation—Howard's
ploughs, Garrett's drills, and Gardner's turnip
slicer; but, curiously enough, of the four
implements specially rewarded by silver medals,
not one remains in use, and two, if not three,
never came into commercial demand at all.

We shall presently contrast this accidental
exhibition of implements with the last greatest
display at Leeds in 1861.

For a few years the Royal Agricultural
Society was a fashion, the names of nominal
members—of whom a large number were content
to dine at the annual show-dinner, and then be
heard of no more—reached six thousand, until
the time came when the society, so rich on
paper, found itself scarcely able to pay its way.
A resort to the lawyers was the consequence.
Thoughtless subscribers were taught that silence
to applications for subscriptions did not
extinguish their liability. The law processes ended
in recovering some much-needed money, and
diminishing the list of subscribers to about four
thousand. From that time the day of amateur
enthusiasm was over, and after a time it became
clear that the success of the society depended
on the business that could be done at its shows.
The exhibitors in each class of live stock found
the show-yard a meat market not only for the
animals shown, but for their blood relations at
home; thus arose a claim for new classes and
prizes for other sheep than the aristocracy of the
sheepfold—the Leicester and the South Down—
and numbers followed the classes. The catalogue
of the live stock exhibited at the Liverpool
show in 1841, fills twenty-four widely printed
pages. In 1861, that of Leeds, eighty-five of
very close print. But number can give but a faint
idea of the improvement in average quality—
in weight, in symmetry, in everything that makes
live stock profitable—which has been distributed
through the length and breadth of the land.

In the department of implements and
machinery, the change, improvement, and increase,
has been still more remarkable. But to give an
idea of this, we must leave generalisation, and
invite our readers to accompany us through all
the stages by which the show-yard is reached,
and then examine it in detail.

It has been the wholesome custom of the
society to divide England into districts, and
every year to pitch its camp and bring its army
of improvers, living and mechanical, to some
central town of each district; thus seeking to
inoculate each in turn with the spirit of progress
by eyesight and earsight. For the breeders and
the manufacturers, the feeders and the users of
implements, who formed the agricultural army,
and could not help but exchange ideas in discussions
under the open sky in the daytime, and over
the social pipe and glass in the evenings, when
the close cram of over-filled inns melted the
chronic timidity of Englishmen so often mistaken
for pride.

Every year the Council puts up its exhibition