at the Royal Society's Shows. At Derby the
first idea of universal pipe-drainage was suggested
by Read's hand-made pipe. At the same show
the doom of wooden-framed harrows was sealed,
for the iron zigzag harrow there appeared. The
judges reported that they could not decide on the
comparative merit of steam-engines, but they
were coming into use as a matter of business.
Tuxford, of Boston, had made the first years
before, but there were no means of sending
such a bulky machine to any customer except
by horse-teams.

A thrashing-machine, which attempted to do
what machines in every village do now, was
another curiosity in 1843. The following year,
1844, at Southampton, Crosskill's clod-crusher,
which had for years been creeping into notice,
took a gold medal and its position as a standard
implement, and one of the Society's successes.
At Shrewsbury, in 1845, appeared the horizontal
tile-making machine, which satisfied all the
demands of the founder of deep uniform agricultural
drainage. The only machine or implement
ever brought out by the Society's prizes. 1846,
at Newcastle, was marked by the Society's
doing a bit of deep-draining on the town moor,
much against the grain of the commoners, and
not without a large expenditure of beer by a
patriotic Newcastle man. This converted the
northern county to deep drainage. The following
year, at Northampton, a complete set of
steel-edged draining tools were, for the first
time, exhibited.

At Norwich, in 1849, a trained mechanic
became the company's engineer.

At Exeter, in 1850, was shown the germ of
Fowler's steam plough, in an attempt to lay
drain pipes of wood by machinery.

In 1851 the Society held no implement show,
and the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park brought
out, without a prize, the first reaping-machine
(from America) that ever attracted serious
notice in England; and Mr. Pusey, acting as
agricultural commissioner, discovered two
implements—Bentall's broadshare and Coleman's
cultivator—which had escaped the attention of the
Society's judges, although the farmers of England
had long previously made them into standard
implements. Since 1851 the Royal Agricultural
Society have repeatedly tried, reported on, and
awarded prizes to reaping-machines. There are
three principles, or plans, on which reaping-
machines have been made; all have been
rewarded twice, and it is impossible to learn from
the Society's decisions which is to be preferred.
Reaping-machines and dearth of labour led to
the importation of grass-mowing-machines,
which also, without prizes, were brought out,
and have been widely adopted by farmers.

At Lincoln, in 1854, swing-ploughs were
signally defeated by wheel-ploughs, but that did not
at the time produce much effect on the Lincolnshire
prejudices in favour of the county swing-
ploughs. Cotgreave's plough, produced at
Lincoln, for performing three operations at once—
ploughing, lifting, and subsoiling—came too
soon, no horse team could work it. The
inventor was fortunate enough to be able to
wait for steam.

In 1856, at Chelmsford, a great change took
place in the arrangements of the implement
department. The vast increase in the number
of articles sent induced the council to consent
to divide the competition into three classes, one
to be tried every third year. Even this was found
too much for the judges, and the prize list is now
spread over four years. Exhibitors at Chelmsford
were also allowed to put the machinery in motion,
and a very dull department from that year became
alive and interesting to the unmechanical
spectators. At an adjourned trial of the steam
cultivator, in 1856, experienced farmers became
convinced that it had left theory and reached
the point of fact. But the Council declined to
bestow the two hundred pounds, part of five
hundred pounds recommended to be given
as a reward for ingenuity by the judges. Since
that year steam cultivation trials have taken
place annually, but as we remarked in 1859,
without the aid of prizes, the problem was being
worked out in Buckinghamshire and Bedford-
shire.*
* Farming by Steam. All the Year Round, May
14, 1859.

At Chester, in 1858, fifteen years after the
week when the exhibition of a few portable
steam-engines was looked upon as a novelty, one
hundred and twelve were entered for competition.
One Lincoln firm alone turns out as many
a day as they proposed, when they founded their
establishment, to turn out in a week. At Chester
the steam ploughing prize of five hundred pounds
was awarded. Since that date, and especially
at Warwick, in 1859, and at Leeds in 1861,
the annual shows have, as fairs, bazaars, and
agricultural conversazione, been glorious, but
as machinery rewarding agricultural mechanical
merit, more and more contradictory and absurd.

Not to be forgotten, before we leave the
show, are the agricultural seed-shops, which
year after year have grown and grown again in
extent and importance. On the arrangement
and adornment of these shops for a sale of less
than a week many hundred pounds must be
expended. We stop opposite a one-storied pavilion
of gaily-painted wood, with two wings connected
by a long portico, fitted as a shop, where specimens
of everything valuable and rare grown in
the world and cultivated in Europe may be seen
in one shape or another. The one wing is the
sleeping apartment of the numerous army of
assistants, the other is the office of the chief.
Before each is a railed-in plot, planted with
evergreens, quite as spacious as many London
gardens. In the long alcove devoted to business,
the advanced-guard is formed of sacks, open and
full of the choicest varieties of every kind of
agricultural seed and lentil, supported, as they
should be, by accurately-coloured wax models of
every kind of root that cattle feed on and men
do not despise—mangolds of gigantic size,
purple and golden yellow, round as bombs or
conical as Whitworth missiles; specimen turnips,