of twenty years the rental of land in Scotland
advanced from two million to five million and a
quarter.

Since that terrible war period there has been
rapid and great increase of population asking
to be fed, there has been great increase of
wealth and great increase of knowledge. Law
has struck off fetters with which it had crippled
enterprise. The steam engine was first applied
to a threshing machine in eighteen hundred and
three; there were several machines so worked
fifteen or eighteen years later. Steam on the
farm, steam on the railway, making transit of
stock easy, the marvellous development of
mechanical inventions, and a still more marvellous
development of the great science of organic
chemistry, which has given a true basis to the
practice of farming, have secured during the
present century the progress of agriculture;
although the majority of farmers, scattered over
the land in much inevitable isolation from the
great collective life of men, have kept pace
slowly with the movements of their day.

Sir Humphrey Davy was the first chemist
who took a real hold upon the agricultural
mind, and this was when, in eighteen 'twelve,
he lectured before the Board of Agriculture,
and showed that agricultural chemistry had
for its study all changes in the arrangements
of matter connected witli the growth and
nourishment of plants; the comparative values
of their produce as food; the constituents of
soils; the manner in which lands are nourished
by manure, or rendered fertile by the different
processes of cultivation. But the great stir in
this direction began with the publication, in
eighteen 'forty, of Baron Liebig's work on
Chemistry in its application to Agriculture and
Physiology. Liebig's writings obtained a
remarkably wide popularity. Everybody
concerned in the management of farms was bitten
by Liebig, and talked potash and nitrogenous
manure. It was the fashion to believe that
this great chemist had found the master key to
agricultural success. There was a wholesome
little mania for agricultural chemistry. The
most wonderful immediate results of all kinds
were expected from what Liebig called offering
a small piece of the philosopher's stone as an
oblation to the God of the Dunghill. But
when these immediate results didn't follow, the
more empty of those who had gone with the
crowd turned back. Nevertheless an impulse
had been given to true progress in the right
direction. In eighteen 'forty-two a body of
Mid Lothian tenant farmers started an
"Agricultural Chemistry Association," and employed
a chemist to conduct experiments for them.
Their zeal died out in a few years, but the
Highland Agricultural Society kept up the
chemical researches. The Agricultural College
at Cirencester originated in the same way in the
same year 'forty-two. There was not only the
Liebig mania in all its freshness and strength,
but the tendency to work by association was
then strengthening among the farmers as
among other bodies of men. The Yorkshire
Society had been formed in 'thirty-seven; the
Royal Agricultural Society of England, which
now has more than five thousand members, and
is in close connexion with the Royal Veterinary
College, in 'thirty-eight; the "Royal
Agricultural Improvement Society of Ireland in
'forty-one; the College at Cirencester, as
before said, in 'forty-two; and in 'forty-three
the chief of the Farmers' Clubs came into life,
the Central Farmers' Club, with its headquarters
at the York Hotel, Bridge-street, Blackfriars.

It was at a meeting of one of the many local
Farmers' Clubs—that of Cirencester and Fairford
held in November eighteen 'forty-two—
that Mr. Robert Jeffries Brown delivered an
address "On the Advantages of a Specific
Education for Agricultural Pursuits;" and this
was the first move towards the founding of the
Cirencester College. When the club met
again, at the end of December, its members
adopted formally a public address based upon
Mr. Brown's views, saying that " we cannot
too highly estimate the importance of a
specific education for those engaged in
agricultural pursuits; and the great value to them
of a knowledge of those sciences that are in
constant operation in the cultivation of the
soil, the growth of crops, and the rearing and
feeding of domestic animals; and we think it
most essential that the study of these sciences
should be united with practical experience.
The advantages of an institution of this kind
to the landowner, as well as to the occupier,
are too obvious to require comment; and we
confidently rely on their cordial co-operation
and support."

They proceeded accordingly to wait upon
landowners and occupiers; upon their own
particular great man at Oakley Park, Earl
Bathurst, and upon the other chief men of the
district. They held meetings also at various
market towns. Mr. Brown gave nearly the
whole of the next year to the work he had
begun. At a public meeting held in Cirencester
in April, 'forty-four, it was moved by an
earl—the late Earl Ducie—and seconded by a
tenant farmer, that an institution ought to be
provided in which " The rising generation of
farmers may receive instruction at a moderate
expense in those sciences a knowledge of which
is essential to successful cultivation, and that a
farm form part of such institution." Then
Lord Bathurst offered a farm of more than four
hundred acres for a long term of years, and an
adjacent building site for ninety-nine years; a
society was formed for the establishment and
management of an agricultural college, the
interest of noblemen and landowners in distant
parts of the kingdom was raised to subscription
point, and a proposed capital of twelve thousand
pounds was thus obtained. In March, 'forty-
five, a charter of incorporation was secured; but
as it was now found that twelve thousand pounds
would not do all that was expected to be done,
it was provided by the deed of settlement that
this capital should be doubled. Additional
exertions did not quite succeed in doubling it,