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  Condition of agriculture in 1837; current explanation of the distress; preparation for a new start in farming; legislative changes; development of a railway system; live-stock in 1837; the general level of farming; foundation of the Royal Agricultural Society; notable improvements, 1837-74; extension of drainage; purchase of feeding stuffs; discovery of artificial fertilisers; mechanical improvements and inventions; Repeal of the Corn Laws; the golden age from 1863 to the end of 1862; rapid progress in the "Fifties"; pedigree mania in stock-breeding.

THE reign of Queen Victoria began in the midst of a transition stage from one state of social and industrial development to another. A complete change of agricultural front was taking place, which necessitated some displacement of the classes that had previously occupied or cultivated the soil. The last ten years of the nineteenth century raised the question of whether agriculture was not passing through another transition stage which, like its predecessor, was to initiate another agricultural revolution and result in another disruption of rural society. This advancing change was suddenly accelerated by the war.

   Roughly speaking, the first thirty-seven years of the new reign formed an era of advancing prosperity and progress, of rising rents and profits, of the rapid multiplication of fertilising agencies, of an expanding area of corn cultivation, of more numerous, better bred, better fed, better housed stock, of varied improvements in every kind of implement and machinery, of growing expenditure on the making of the land by drainage, the construction of roads, the erection of farm buildings, and the division into fields of convenient size. So far as the standard of the highest farming is concerned agriculture made but little advance since the "Fifties." The last twenty-six years of the reign, on the other hand, were a period of agricultural adversity--of falling rents, dwindling profits, contracting areas of arable cultivation, diminishing stock, decreasing expenditure on land improvement.

   In 1837 the farming industry had passed through a quarter of a century of misfortunes, aggravated by a disordered currency, bank failures, adverse seasons, labour difficulties, agrarian discontent. During times of adversity it has always been the practice to charge landowners, farmers, and even labourers with extravagance, to trace distress to their increased luxury, to attribute their domestic difficulties to their less simple habits. The explanation is as old as the hills. Arthur Young, writing in 1773 On the Present State of Waste Lands, remarks that the landed gentry were beggared by their efforts to rival their wealthier neighbours who had amassed fortunes in trade. The rural frog burst in his efforts to equal the proportions of the civic ox. "The antient prospect which afforded pleasure to twenty generations is poisoned by the pagodas and temples of some rival neighbour; some oilman who builds on the solid foundation of pickles and herrings. At church the liveries of a tobacconist carry all the admiration of the village; and how can the daughter of the ancient but decayed gentleman stand the competition at an assembly with the point, diamonds and tissues of a haberdasher's nieces?" Their tenants did not escape from similar charges. In 1573 Tusser had alluded to farmers with "hawk on hand" who neglected their business for sport; in the nineteenth century it was said to be the hunting-field or the racecourse which attracted them from the farm or the market. In 1649 Walter Blith had attributed the rural depression of that day to the "high stomachs" of the farmers. So in 1816 the wiseacres of the London clubs vehemently contended that farmers had only to return from claret to beer, and their wives from the piano to the hen-house, and agricultural distress would be at an end. It was reserved for an imaginative versifier in 1801 to charge them with soaking fivepound notes instead of rusks in their port wine. Somewhat similar in tone was the outcry against labourers. "We hear," writes Borlase, the Cornish antiquary, in 1771, "every day of murmurs of the common people; of want of employ; of short wages; of dear provisions. There may be some reason for this ; our taxes are heavy upon the necessaries of life; but the chief reason is the extravagance of the vulgar in the unnecessaries of life." Among the tinworkers in his parish were three-score snuff-boxes at one time; of fifty girls above fifteen years old, forty-nine had scarlet cloaks. "There is scarce a family in the parish, I mean of common labourers, but have tea, once if not twice a day. . . . In short, all labourers live above their conditions."

   The same explanations with regard to all classes of agriculturists were repeated in 1837, and have been periodically offered ever since. The diagnosis of disease would not be so popular if it were not easy and to some extent true. It is, to say the least, inadequate. When the standard of living rises for all classes, agriculturists are not the only men who spend money more lavishly than the prudence which criticises after the event can justify. But the true explanation of the distress lay in the conditions already described. The old instrument of farming had failed; the new had not been perfected. An agricultural revolution was in progress, which was none the less complete in its operation because it was peaceful in its processes.

   In 1837 agriculture was languishing; farming had retrograded; heavy clay-lands were either abandoned or foul, and in a miserable state of cultivation. Indifferent pasture, when first ploughed, had produced good corn crops from the accumulated mass of elements of fertility which they had stored. But this savings bank of wealth had been soon exhausted. At peace-prices half crops ceased to be remunerative, and the newly ploughed arable area was now recovering itself from exhaustion to grass as best it could without assistance. Lighter soils had suffered comparatively little; turnips, and the Norfolk system had helped the eastern counties to bear the stress of the storm, yet, even there, farmers had "had to put down their chaises and their nags." Much of the progress made between 1790 and 1812 had been lost. Nor was this the worst feature. The distrust which prevailed between farmers and their men had extended to tenants and their landlords. Men who had contracted to pay war rents from peace profits were shy of leases. For at least a generation confidence was shaken between landlord and tenant. The brighter side to the picture was that, in the midst of much suffering, the ground had been prepared for new conditions. Small yeomen, open-field farmers, and commoners could never have fed a manufacturing population. They could not have initiated and would not have adopted agricultural improvements, of which some were still experimental, and of which all required an initial expenditure. It was from these classes that the most bigoted opponents of "Practice with Science" were recruited, and their contempt was heartily sincere for the innovations of the " apron-string " farmer. Socially valuable though they were, they were becoming commercially discredited. Their disappearance was a social loss; but it had become an economic necessity. The land could no longer be cultivated for the needs of a scanty, scattered population, occupied in the tillage of the soil, or engaged in one-man handicrafts. So long as England depended for food on her own produce,--a condition which lasted a quarter of a century after the repeal of the Corn Laws,--it was requisite that farming should be transformed from a self-sufficing domestic industry into a profit-earning manufactory of bread, beef, and mutton. Food, upon the scale that changed conditions demanded, could only be produced upon land which had been prepared for the purpose by the outlay of capitalist landlords and the intelligent enterprise of large tenant-farmers.

   In other respects, also, the distress of 1813-37 produced good results. So long as war prices prevailed, prosperous years had brought wealth to slovens, and sluggards had amassed riches in their sleep. The collapse of prosperity spurred the energies and enterprise of both landlords and tenants, who could only hold their own by economising the cost and increasing the amount of production. Within certain limits, low prices and keen competition compelled improvement. Again, though the attraction of war-prices had driven the plough through much valuable pasture, it had also supplied the incentive which added hundreds of thousands of acres of wastes to the cultivated area of the country. Finally, during the era of Protection, landlords and farmers had learned to rely too entirely upon Parliamentary help in their difficulties. They had been prone to expect that alterations in the protective duties would turn the balance between the success and failure of their harvests. Now, disappointment after disappointment had taught them the useful lesson that they could expect no immediate assistance from legislative interference, and that, if they wanted aid, they must help themselves.

   Meanwhile legislation had been active in many useful directions. The agricultural revolution, and the effects alike of war and peace, had completely disorganised the labour market. Parliament cooperated with industrial changes in redressing the balance between demand and supply and in adapting the relations of capital and labour to new conditions. For agricultural labourers the Poor-Law of 1834 did what the Factory legislation of 1833 had done for artisans. The change produced immediate effect. The number of paupers steadily diminished, and the poor-rates fell from seven millions in 1832 to four millions in 1837. New means of transport had been provided by the opening up of canals. Increased facilities of communication had been supplied by progress in the art of roadconstruction. Though Turnpike Trusts were proving inefficient on the great highways, the first step towards the improvement of minor roads had been taken by the Act of 1835, which substituted a rate for the old statute labour. Another legislative result of the prolonged agricultural distress had been the Tithe Commutation Act of 1836. The incidence of the charge was shifted; it no longer operated as a check to the expenditure of capital or a discouragement to skilful and enterprising farming.

   It was a period of preparation, the full significance of which was then imperfectly understood. Few persons in 1837 could have foreseen the imminence of social and industrial changes which introduced to British farming an unexampled era of prosperity, or could have foretold that new markets would not only be opened up, but brought to the doors of agriculturists. Signs of better times were indeed faintly visible. Manufacturing progress was beginning to tell upon agriculture; steam navigation was stimulating trade; joint-stock banks helped farmers to face their difficulties; the new system of poor-law administration was restoring the labour market to healthier conditions; beef, mutton, wool, barley, and oats sold briskly. Above all, the whole country was beginning to respond to the vast impulse which the introduction of railways gave to it intelligence, its intercourse, its enterprise, its agriculture, manufacture, and commerce. Without assistance or control by the State, in the face of many difficulties and prejudices, railways were being built piecemeal by private energy and capital. They were still in their infancy. It was not till 1821 that the Act for the construction of the Stockton and Darlington Railway had been passed. The Liverpool and Manchester Railway was opened in 1830, and the line from London to Birmingham was completed in 1838. Between those two dates fifty-six Acts had been already passed for laying 1,800 miles of rails.

   The era of railways had begun. The real innovations lay in the application of steam as the motive power to movable engines, the construction of new and independent lines of communication, the conveyance not only of goods but of passengers. Rail-ways to facilitate the transport of heavy weights had been in use for nearly two centuries. They seem to have been first employed in the Newcastle district to convey coal from the pits to the shipping stages on the Tyne. Wooden rails, laid on continuous parallel lines, were pegged down to wooden sleepers, which were set two feet apart, the intervals being filled in with stones or ashes. On these tracks, high hopper-shaped waggons, set on solid wooden wheels, were either propelled by their own weight or drawn by horses. Log ways, thus constructed, were called in eighteenth century Acts of Parliament "dram roads." They were in fact true tram-ways, though the word "tram" has been transferred from the material out of which the rails were originally constructed to the vehicle which passes over them. Successive improvements were made in their construction. Thus iron plates or iron flanges were fixed by "plate-layers" to the rails to lessen the friction at the curves or to keep the waggons on the track. About 1767 the rails began to be made entirely of iron, which were generally cast with an iron flange on the inner side. Similarly the wheels were made of cast iron, though for some years the rear wheels continued to be made of wood in order to strengthen the grip of the brake. In 1788 a still more important change was made. The projections of the flanged rail were found to be dangerous obstructions wherever lines crossed highways. To meet this difficulty, flanged wheels were introduced, and the rails were made smooth.

   By the latter half of the eighteenth century, there were few collieries in the north which were not provided with their own railways, often carried, in order to secure easy gradients, through hills and over valleys by means of cuttings, bridges, or embankments. They were private roads, to which the public had no access. Rail-ways laid by Canal Companies under the powers of Acts of Parliament were in a different position. Constructed by canal proprietors to feed their traffic from potteries, furnaces, collieries, and quarries, they were public highways, maintained, like turnpike roads, by the payments of those who used them. The Canal Companies provided no rolling stock. On payment of the stipulated tolls, any trader might transport his goods over the flanged rails in his own vehicles to the wharves. In the development of these lines, which were subsidiary to inland waterways, the lead was taken by the valley of the Severn, the Western Midlands, and South Wales. The utility of the system was at once apparent. Rail-ways multiplied rapidly, not as rivals, but as aids, to the canals which they eventually destroyed.

   Numerous rail-ways, either in private hands or feeders to canals, existed at the end of the eighteenth century. The first public independent rail-way was constructed by Act of Parliamant in 1801. The Surrey Iron Rail-way connected Croydon and the mills on the Wandle with the Thames at Wandsworth. Originally intended to run to Portsmouth, it was never carried beyond Merstham. Nearly twenty years later an Act of Parliament (1821) was obtained for the construction of the Stockton and Darlington Rail-way. On this line all the stages in the transformation of the ancient rail-way into the modern type were exemplified. Hitherto speed had not been regarded as an object. Horses were generally employed, and, where steam had been introduced as the motive power, its use had been practically confined to stationary engines, placed at the top of inclines, which by means of ropes or chains drew waggons up the ascent and regulated the pace of their descent. In poetry, Erasmus Darwin' had anticipated the coming triumph of steam in his The Botanic Garden, Part I. 289:

"Soon shall thy arm, unconquered Steam! afar
Drag the slow barge, or drive the rapid car;
Or on wide-waving Wings expanded bear
The flying chariot thro' the fields of air!"

   But in 1820 the vision of the "rapid car," drawn by steam, still seemed as extravagant as the dream of the "flying chariot" appeared to a later generation familiar with fast trains. The projectors of the Stockton and Darlington Railway hesitated between wooden or iron rails, between animal or steam power, between stationary or movable engines. When the line was opened in 1825, the waggons, under the advice of George Stephenson, were drawn over iron rails at an average pace of five miles an hour by steam locomotives, designed on the model of the engines which he had successfully introduced at Killingworth Colliery. Goods traffic only was at first undertaken by the railway company. The conveyance of passengers was left to private enterprise; coaches drawn by one horse ran over the rails, on payment of stipulated tolls, at intervals when the goods trains were not running. It was not till 1833 that the Company bought out the coach proprietors, and, a year later, issued notices that they proposed to provide not only carriages for goods, but "coaches" for the conveyance of passengers, drawn by steam locomotives.

   Before this final stage was reached in the County of Durham, the Liverpool and Manchester Railway had been opened (1830). The project of the proposed line originated in dissatisfaction with the cost and delay of canal transport. It was directly designed not to feed but to rival the water way, and to break down a monopoly in the carriage of heavy goods. Canal companies all over the country became alive to their danger. So strong was the opposition that the first Bill was defeated. A second Bill was introduced, and passed in 1826. Like the Stockton and Darlington Company, the projectors hesitated over the choice of motive power. They were still undecided when the new line was approaching completion. To solve the problem they offered a premium of £500 for the best locomotive engine which should satisfy certain conditions. It was not to exceed £550 in price and six tons in weight; it was also to draw three times its own weight, at a speed of ten miles an hour on level ground. The famous Rainhill trial (October 8, 1829), when Stephenson's Rocket won the prize, sealed the fate of canals and inaugurated the triumph of railways. Without their aid the modern organisation of industry would have been impossible. The factory, the modern farm, and the railway went hand in hand in development and were not dissimilar in their economic results.

   With the ground thus prepared for a new start, but in gloom and depression, agriculturists entered on a new reign. In comparing agriculture at the end with that of the beginning of the reign of Victoria, the most striking feature was the rise in the general level of excellence. If we leave on one side the achievements of chemical science and the triumphs of mechanical invention, there were few improvements in the practices of agriculture at the end of the reign which had not been anticipated by some individuals sixty years earlier. But the knowledge which was then, at the most, confined to one or two men in the country had at the close of the century become generally diffused. The best farmers of that day could not have explained the reasons for their methods; they farmed by experience and intuition. Judgment is still all-important; but practice has now been reduced to principles and rules, which make the best methods more nearly common property, or at least place them within reach of all. The best arable farms in 1837 were cropped much as they are now, except that rotations were more rigid and inelastic. Pedigree barleys and pedigree wheats were already experimented upon by Patrick Shirreff, Dr. Chevallier, and Colonel Le Couteur. By the most enterprising of our predecessors all the kinds of farm produce which are raised to-day were raised seventy years ago.

   Live-stock has doubtless immensely improved since the accession of Queen Victoria. Specialisation did away with "general utility " animals, and successfully developed symmetry, quality, early maturity, or yield of milk among cattle. But the value and importance of improving breeds had been thoroughly appreciated by the best farmers before 1837. Though only one herd-book--Coates's Shorthorn Herdbook (1822)--had begun to appear, the followers of Bakewell,--such as Charles and Robert Colling, Thomas Bates, of Kirklevington, the Booths, and Sir Charles Knightley with the Shorthorns,--Benjamin Tomkins, John Hewer, and the Prices with the Herefords,--Francis Quartly, George Turner, William Davy, and Thomas Coke of Norfolk with the North Devons,--had already brought to a high degree of perfection the breeds with which their names are respectively associated. Flockmasters, like cattlebreeders, had recognised the coming changes. Before 1837 Bakewell's methods had been extensively imitated. The Lincolns, the Border Leicesters of the Culleys, the Southdowns of Ellman of Glynde and Jonas Webb of Babraham, the Black-faced Heath breed of David Dun, the Cheviots of Robson of Belford were already firmly established; and some of the best of the local varieties of sheep, enumerated by Sir John Sinclair in his Address to the British Wool Society (1791), were beginning to find their champions. Nor were pigs unappreciated. The reproach was no longer justified which, at the close of the eighteenth century, Arthur Young had directed against farmers for their neglect of this source of profit. Here, again, Bakewell had led the way. Efforts were being made to improve such native breeds as the Yorkshire Whites, the Tamworths, the reddish-brown Berkshires, or the black breeds of Essex and Suffolk.

   Oxen were still extensively used for farm work. It is therefore not surprising that comparatively little attention had been paid to horses for agricultural purposes. Yet here, too, some progress was made, particularly from the point of view of specialisation. The Clydesdales were coming to the front as rivals to old English breeds. Beauty was not the strong point of the "Sorrel-coloured Suffolk Punch." Nor was he any longer suited to the pace required in the modern hunting-field or on the improved roads. But in 1837 it was recognised that his unrivalled power of throwing his whole weight into the collar fitted him pre-eminently for farm work. A similar change was passing over the Cleveland Bay. Threatened with extinction by the disappearance of coaches, he was found to be invaluable on light-soil farms. So also a definite place was assigned to another breed known to the sixteenth century. The "Large Black Old English Cart-horse," which Young calls "the produce principally of the Shire counties in the heart of England," was, to some extent, experimented upon by Bakewell. But the development of the breed belongs to a later date than the first half of the Victorian era, and it is as a draught-horse that the Shire has been, since 1879, patronised by Societies and enrolled in stud-books.

   It has been said that while the general standard of farming was still extremely low, the best practice of individual farmers in 1837 has been little improved by the progress of seventy years. Production has been considerably increased; but the higher averages are due to the wider diffusion of the best practices rather than to any notable novelties, and it is in live-stock that real advance is most clearly marked. If, however, we turn from the highest practice of farming to the general conditions under which it was carried on, or to the processes by which crops were cultivated, harvested, and marketed, the contrast between 1837 and 1902 is almost startling.

   In 1837 the open-field system still prevailed extensively. Holdings were in general inconveniently small, though in some parts of the country farms had been consolidated. Farm-buildings, often placed at the extreme end of the holding, consisted of large barns for storing and threshing corn, a stable and yard for cart-horses, a shed for carts and waggons. But the cattle, worse housed than the waggons, were huddled into draughty, rickety sheds, erected without plan, ranged round a yard whence the liquid manure, freely diluted from the unspouted roofs, ran first into a horse-pond, and thence escaped into the nearest ditch. In these sheds the live-stock subsisted during the winter months on starvation allowance. Fat cattle, instead of being conveyed by rail quickly and cheaply, were driven to distant markets, losing weight every yard of the way. Long legs were still a consideration for sheep which had to plough through miry lanes. Farm roads were few and bad. Where land had been early enclosed, the fields were often small, fenced with high and straggling hedges. Very little land was drained, and, except in Suffolk and Essex, scarcely any effort had been made to carry off the surface-water from clay soils.

   Little or no machinery was employed in any operation of tillage. In remote parts of the country, even on light soils and for summer work, heavy wooden ploughs with wooden breasts, slowly drawn by teams of five horses or six oxen, attended by troops of men and boys, still lumbered on their laborious way, following the sinuous shape of boundary fences, or throwing up ridges crooked like an inverted S, and laid high by successive ploughing towards the crown. In more advanced districts, less cumbrous and more effective implements of lighter draught, wheel or swing, were employed. But not a few discoveries of real value fell into disuse, or failed to find honour in the land of their birth, till they returned to this country with the brand of American innovations. The mistake was too often made of exaggerating the universal value of a new implement in the style of modern vendors of patent-medicines. Enthusiasts forgot that provincial customs were generally founded on commonsense, and that farmers reasoned from actual instances which had come within their personal experience. The boast that a two-horse plough, with reins and one man, could, on all soils and at all seasons, do the work of the heavy implement dear to the locality only made the ancient heirloom more precious in the eye of its owner. It was with antiquated implements, heavy in the draught, that most of the soil was still cultivated. Harrows were generally primitive in form and ineffective in operation, scarcely penetrating the ground and powerless to stir the weeds. To keep the seed-bed firm against the loosening effects of frost the only roller was a stone or the trunk of a tree heavily weighted. When the bed was prepared for the crop, the seed was still sown broadcast by hand, or, more rarely, either dibbed or drilled. The Northumberland drill for turnips, and the Suffolk drill for cereals, which travelled every year on hire as far as Oxfordshire, had already attained something more than local popularity. But corn and roots, even in 1837, were seldom either drilled or dibbed. The advantages of both methods were still hotly denied. A man who used a drill would be asked by his neighbours when he was going to sow pepper from a pepper-caster. From the time the seed was sown and harrowed in, the infant crops waged an internecine and unaided strife with weeds. Even the hand-hoe rarely helped cereals in the struggle, for the cost was heavy, and the work, unless carefully supervised, was easily scamped.

   In 1837 hand-labour alone gathered the crops. Corn was cut by scythes, fagging hooks, or sickles; if with the first, each scytheman was followed by a gatherer and a binder; a stooker and raker completed the party. When a good man headed the gang, with four men to each scytheman, two acres a day per scythe were easily completed. Threshed by the flail, the grain was heaped into a head on the floor of the barn. The chaff was blown away by means of the draught of wind created by a revolving wheel, with sacks nailed to its arms, which was turned by hand. Thus winnowed, the grain was shovelled, in small quantities at a time, into a hopper, whence it ran, in a thin stream, down a screen or riddle. As the stream descended, the smaller seeds were separated and removed. The wheat was then piled at one end of the barn, and "thrown" in the air with a casting shovel to the other extremity. The heavy grain went furthest; the lighter, or "tail," dropped short. To some of the corn in both heaps the chaff still adhered. These "whiteheads" were removed by fanning in a large basket tray, pressed to the body of the fanner, who tossed the grain in the air, at the same time lowering the outer edge of the tray. By this process the whiteheads were brought to the top and extremity of the fan, whence they were swept by the hand. Lastly the corn was measured, and poured into four-bushel sacks, ready for market. The operation of dressing was slow. As the sun streamed through a crack in the barn-door, it reached the notches which were cut in the wood-work to mark the passage of time and the recurrence of the hours for lunch and dinner. The operation was expensive as well as slow, costing from six to seven shillings a quarter. Hay was similarly made in all its stages by hand, and with a care which preserved its colour and scent. The grass, mown by the scythe, fell into swathes. These were broken up by the haymakers, drawn with the hand-rake into windrows, first single, then double. The double windrows were pulled over once, put first into small cocks, then into larger which were topped up and trimmed so as to be shower proof, and finally arranged in cart-rows for pitching and loading. Women, working behind the carts, allowed scarcely a blade to escape their rakes.

   The farmer in 1837 had a reaper at his command, but he did not value the gift. Its sudden popularity illustrates a point which is perpetually recurring in the history of agricultural machinery. As soon as the want is created, the machine is not only discovered but appreciated. Many attempts were made to perfect a reaper. But none met with any real success till machines not only cut the corn but laid it in sheaves, till fields were enlarged, till thorough drainage was adopted, and, as a consequence, the old high-ridging system abandoned. It is a sign, and a consequence, of changes in farming that the Rev. Patrick Bell's reaper, invented in 1826, was not really appreciated till it was manufactured (1853) by Cresskill as the "Beverley Reaper." Threshing and winnowing machines were to be found on a few large farms, or travelled the country on hire, worked by horse, water, or steam power. For feeding stock, chaff-cutters and turnip-slicers were already known; but they made their way slowly into use. Chaff was still generally cut, and turnips split, by a chopper. If cattle or sheep were unable to bite, they ran the risk of being starved.

   No one who studies the agriculture of 1837 can fail to notice the perpetual contrast, often in the most glaring form, between the practices of adjoining agriculturists. A hundred farmers plodded along the Elizabethan road, while a solitary neighbour marched in the track of the twentieth century. Discoveries in scientific farming, put forward as novelties, were repeatedly found to be in practice in one district or another. The great need was the existence of some agency which would raise the general level of farming by making the best practices of the best agriculturists common knowledge. The problem was not readily solved. To diffuse scientific and practical information among agriculturists was difficult seventy years ago. Books were expensive, and those for whom they were written were often unable to read. Few of the agricultural works published before the reign of Victoria were produced by men of practical experience. Extravagant promises or incorrect science too often discounted the value of useful suggestions. What was really wanted was ocular demonstration of the superiority of new methods, or the example of men of authority who combined scientific with practical knowledge. Some of the agricultural societies already in existence were doing good work in communicating the results of experiments, organising shows, and encouraging discoveries; others met rather for the consumption of meat and drink than for the discussion of their production. The Board of Agriculture had established a strong claim to the gratitude of farmers by providing Davy's lectures on agricultural chemistry in 1803-13. But its dissolution in 1822 had been one of the symptoms of distress. The foundation of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, projected in 1837, established in 1838, and incorporated by Royal Charter in 1840, with Queen Victoria as patron, was at once a sign of revival and a powerful agent in restoring prosperity.

   Among the founders of the Society were many of the beat-known landowners and most practical agriculturists of the day. Their association in a common cause carried weight and authority throughout the whole country. Their recognition of their territorial duties and enthusiasm for the general advancement of agriculture were communicated to others, and commanded success by their sincerity. The Society met a recognised want in the right way. It proclaimed the alliance between practical farmers and men both of capital and of science; it indicated the directions in which agriculture was destined to advance. The wise exclusion of politics, though for a moment it threatened to endanger the existence of the new institution, eventually secured it the support of men of every shade of political opinion. By the comprehensiveness, elasticity, and foresight, with which its lines of development were traced, it has been enabled to meet the varying needs of seventy years of change. It has encouraged practical farming on scientific principles; it has also encouraged agricultural science to proceed on practical lines. It has by premiums and pecuniary aid promoted discovery and invention; by its shows it has fostered competition, stimulated enterprise, and created a standard of the best possible results, methods, processes, and materials in British agriculture. Its Journal disseminated the latest results of scientific research at home and abroad, as well as the last lessons of practical experience. In its pages will be found the truest picture of the history of farming in the reign of Queen Victoria. Starting as it did under peculiarly favourable circumstances, and supported by writers like Philip Pusey and Chandos Wren-Hoskyns, it commanded the pens of masters in the lost art of agricultural literature--men who wrote with the knowledge of specialists and with the forcible simplicity of practical men of the world. Without exaggeration it may be said that the general standard of excellence to which farming has attained throughout the kingdom has been to a considerable extent the work of the Royal Agricultural Society. For more than seventy years it has been the heart and brain of agriculture. The local associations which now compete with it in popularity are in great measure its own creations, and it can contemplate with pride, unmixed with envy, the sturdy growth of its own children.

   From 1840 to 1901, Queen Victoria was the patron, and to Her Majesty's patronage the Society owed much of its prestige and consequent utility. It has been said that "agriculture" is "the pursuit of kings"; yet the feeling certainly had existed that farming was beneath the dignity of gentry. Fortunately for British farming, landlords have had a truer perception of their territorial duties as well as of their pecuniary interests. In taking the lead they have made a vast outlay of private capital. Windsor, Osborne, Balmoral, Sandringham, and the home-farms of large landowners have set the fashion, and afforded the model, to hosts of agriculturists. They have helped not only to raise the standard of British farming, but also to make a costly industry a fashionable yet earnest pursuit. A detailed history, for instance, of the Windsor farms would epitomise the history of agricultural progress in the nineteenth century. Roads were laid out. Liebig's discovery that warmth is a saving of food was acted upon, and substantial buildings were erected, designed to economise the expense and labour of cattle-feeding, and at the same time to preserve manure from waste or impoverishment. Skilfully selected herds of pure-bred Shorthorns, Herefords, and Devons were formed; quantities of food were purchased; the soil was drained on scientific principles; the arable land, for the most part a stiff clay, was ameliorated and enriched by high farming; the latest inventions in implements or machinery were tested and adopted; the grass-lands were improved by experiment and careful management; a model dairy, designed to meet the exacting requirements of modern sanitation and convenience, was erected; and, to supply the milk, a pure-bred herd of Jersey cattle was formed which soon became one of the most celebrated in the country.

   The work which the Royal Agricultural Society was established to do was not done by it alone. Other societies, as well as associations and farmers' clubs, assisted in spreading scientific and practical knowledge of farming. Among many other useful writers on the subject the Rev. W. L. Rham, Youatt, James Johnston, Henry Stephens, Dr. Lindley, and John Chalmers Morton, as Editor of the Agricultural Gazette did excellent service. The school-master was abroad, and the foundation of Cirencester Agricultural College in 1845 was a sign of the times. The need for agricultural statistics, which had long been severely felt, had been emphasised by Sir James (then Mr.) Caird in 1850-1. But it was not till 1866 that the want was supplied. Attempts had been frequently made to obtain statistical information, but without success. Fear of increased taxation closed the mouths of landowners and farmers. In 1855 a House of Lords Committee recommended the compulsory collection of statistics through the agency of the Poor-Law officials. Eleven years later (1866) the Agricultural Returns of Great Britain for the first time supplied an accurate account of the acreage, the cropping, and the live-stock of the country.

   The new alliance of science with practice bore rich and immediate fruit. Science helped practical farming in ways as varied as they were innumerable. Chemists, geologists, physiologists, entomologists, botanists, zoologists, veterinaries, bacteriologists, architects, mechanics, engineers, surveyors, statisticians, lessened the risks and multiplied the resources of the farmer. Steam and machinery diminished his toil and reduced his expenses. His land was neither left idle nor its fertility exhausted. Improved implements rendered his labour cheaper, quicker, surer, and more effective. New means of transport and increased facilities of communication brought new markets to his door. Commodious and convenient buildings replaced tumble-down barns and draughty sheds. Veterinary skill saved the lives of valuable animals. The general level of agriculture rose rapidly towards that which only model farms had attained in the previous period. Sound roads, well-arranged homesteads, heavy crops, well-bred stock, skilled farmers, and high farming characterised the era which adopted the Royal Agricultural Society's rule of Practice with Science. Cut off from their old resource of increasing production by adding to the cultivated area, deprived of the aid of Protection, agriculturists were compelled to adopt improved methods. The age of farming by extension of area had ended; that of farming by intension of capital had begun.

   To trace out in full detail one single point in which science has helped farmers would be the work of a separate volume. Selection and outline are all that is possible. Probably the most striking contributions which, during the period under review, were made to the progress of agriculture are the extension of drainage, the discovery of artificial manures, the increased purchase of feeding stuffs for cattle, the improvement of implements, the readier acceptance of new ideas and inventions. Such an advance was impossible in the days of pack-waggons. By the railways all that farmers had to sell or wanted to buy,--corn and cattle, coal, implements, machinery, manures, oil-cake, letters and newspapers, as well as the men themselves,--were conveyed to and fro more expeditiously and more cheaply.

   Drainage was the crying need of the day both for pasture and arable land. If the land was heavy and undrained pasture, the moisture-loving plants overpowered the more nutritive herbage; the over-wetness became in rainy seasons a danger to the stock; the early and late growth of grass was checked; the effect of autumn and spring frosts was more severely felt. If stiff, retentive, undrained land was under the plough, it was cultivated at greater cost, on fewer days in the year, during a season shorter at both ends, than lighter soils; unless the seasons were favourable, it produced late and scanty harvests of corn and beans, was often unsafe for stock, could bear the introduction neither of roots nor of green-cropping, repeatedly needed bare fallows, wasted much of the benefit of manures and feeding stuff. For many years clay-farmers had been seeking for some expedient which would remedy the overwetness of their land, and enable them to share in the profits that new resources had placed within reach of their neighbours on freer and more porous soils. It was upon them that the blow of agricultural depression from 1813 to 1836 had fallen with the greatest severity. Clay farms had fallen into inferior hands, partly because men of capital preferred mixed or grazing farms. Weaker tenants were thus driven on to the heavier land, on which they could not afford the outlay needed to make their holdings profitable. Yet their strong land, if seasons proved favourable, was still capable of yielding the heaviest crops. Some process was needed which would so change the texture of the soil as to render it more friable, easier to work, more penetrable to the rain, more accessible to air and manure, and therefore warmer and kindlier for the growth of plant life.

   The usual expedient for carrying off the water from heavy soils was the open-field practice of throwing the land into high ridges, whence the rain flowed into intervening furrows, which acted as surface-drains. But this device not only stripped the land of some of its most valuable portions by washing the surface tilth into the furrows, it also robbed the soil of the fertilising agencies which rain-water holds in solution and by percolation carries downwards to the plants. For both these reasons the ancient practice of such counties as Essex and Suffolk was a great advance. In those counties trenches were cut from 2 ft. to 2½ ft. in depth at frequent intervals, filling the bottom of the cavity with boughs of thorn, heath, or alder, and the soil replaced. Sometimes, where peat or stones were easily available, they were used instead of bushes. Sometimes the filling was only intended to support the soil until a natural arch was consolidated to form a waterway. For this more temporary purpose, twisted ropes of straw or hops, or a wooden plug, which was afterwards drawn out, were generally employed. In other counties, other materials or devices were adopted. Thus in Leicestershire, a V-shaped sod was cut, the bottom end taken off, and the rest replaced. In Hertfordshire, at the lowest part of the field, a pit was sunk into a more porous stratum, filled up with stones, and covered in with earth. Many of the Suffolk and Essex drains lasted a considerable time; but the arched waterways were apt to choke or fall in, and the depth at which they were placed was considered unsuitable for land under the plough. So little was the practice known outside these two counties that in 1841 its existence was a revelation to so enlightened an agriculturist as Philip Pusey. In tapping springs, caused by water meeting an impervious subsoil and rising to the surface, most useful work had been done by Joseph. Elkington,* a Warwickshire farmer in the latter half of the eighteenth century. Throughout the Midland counties his services were in such request that his crow-bar was compared to the rod of Moses. In 1797 he had received £1,000 from Parliament on the recommendation of the Board of Agriculture, and an attempt was made to reduce his practice to rules. But his success was so much the result of his personal observation and experience that the attempt failed. The principles of drainage were not yet understood.

*An Account of the most approved Mode of Draining Land according to the System practised by Mr. Joseph Elkington, by John Johnstone, Land Surveyor, Edinburgh, 1797.

   In 1823 James Smith of Deanston, then a man of 34, began to cultivate the small farm attached to the Deanston Cotton Works of which he was manager. By his system of drainage and deep ploughing he converted a rush-grown marsh into a garden. His drains were trenches 2½ ft. deep, filled with stones and covered over, cut in parallel lines from 16 to 21 ft. apart. Agriculturists flocked to Perthshire to see with their own eyes the transformation and its causes. Smith's Remarks on Thorough Draining and Deep Ploughing (1831) were widely read, and in 1834 he was examined as a witness by the Committee which was then enquiring into the condition of agriculture. The value of his experience was recognised; enquiry and discussion were excited. In 1843 Josiah Parkes, profiting by the knowledge which he had acquired in draining Chat Moss, laid down his principles of drainage. Thinking that Smith's trenches were too shallow, he advocated a depth of four feet, which would give a sufficient layer of warm mellow surface earth. On these principles millions of acres were drained, and thousands of pounds wasted where drains were laid too deep. The necessary implements were quickly perfected. But for some little time a cheap conduit remained a difficulty. Stones were not everywhere available, and, if carted and broken, their use was expensive. In 1843 John Reade, a gardener by trade and a self-taught mechanic, produced a cylindrical clay-pipe. Two years later (1845) Thomas Scragg patented a pipe-making machine which enabled the kilns to work cheaply and expeditiously. The capital and the soil of the country became acquainted on an extensive scale. Within the next few years, two large public loans for drainage, repaid by annual instalments, were taken up, and treble the amount was spent by private owners or advanced by private companies. Drainage became the popular improvement by which landlords endeavoured to encourage tenants who were dismayed by the repeal of the Corn Laws. It gave clay farmers longer seasons and added to the number of the days on which they could work their land; it increased the ease of their operations and the efficacy of their manures; it secured an earlier seedtime and an earlier harvest, raised the average produce, and lowered the cost of working; it enabled the occupiers of hundreds of thousands of acres to profit by past as well as future discoveries.

   Drainage was a necessary preliminary to profitable manuring. On undrained land farmers could not use to full advantage the new means of wealth which agricultural chemistry was placing at their command. But while drainage, in the main, helped only one class of farmers, the benefits of manure were universal. The practice of manuring is of immemorial antiquity. But it was in the extended choice of fertilising substances, in the scientific analysis of their composition and values, in their concentration and portability, and in the greater range of time at which they could be profitably applied that a prodigious advance was made during the Victorian era.

   For inland farmers in rural districts the choice of manures was practically limited to the ashes of vegetable refuse which represented the food drawn by the plant from the soil, "catch-cropping" with leguminous crops, folding sheep, and farmyard manure. "Nothing like muck" had become a proverb when there was practically "nothing but muck" to be used. On the same poverty of fertilising resources were founded the severe restrictions against selling hay, straw, and roots off farms. In another sense the proverb is true--fortunately for the fertility of the country. Rich both in organic and inorganic substances, combining both nitrogen and minerals, possessing for the loosening of clay lands a peculiar value, farmyard manure is the only substance which contains in itself all the constituent elements of fertility. Our predecessors thus commanded the most valuable of fertilising agencies, the most certain and the least capricious. But in their open unspouted, unguttered yards, in their ignorance of the importance of the liquid elements, and with their straw-fed stock, the manure was both wasted and impoverished. Nor is it only in the quantity and quality of dung, or in its collection and treatment, that farmers have the advantage to-day. Formerly distant fields suffered when no concentrated and portable fertiliser existed, and, valuable though dung is, its uses are not unlimited. In the infancy, moreover, of agricultural science, men had little knowledge of the composition of soils, the necessities of plant life, or the special demand that each crop makes on the land. It is in all these respects that modern resources are multiplied. The supply of concentrated portable manures, adapted by their varied range to all conditions of the soil, capable of restoring those elements of fertility which each particular crop exhausts, and applicable at different stages of plant life, is the greatest achievement of modern agricultural science.

   It is to the great German chemist Liebig that modern agriculture owes the origin of its most striking development. In 1840 his Organic Chemistry in its applications to Agriculture and Physiology clearly traced the relations between the nutrition of plants and the composition of the soil. In his mineral theory he was proved to be mistaken; but his book revolutionised the attitude which agriculturists had maintained towards chemistry. So great was the enthusiasm of country gentlemen for Liebig and his discoveries, as popularised by men like Johnston and Voelcker, that the Royal Chemical Society of 1845 was in large, measure founded by their efforts. But if the new agriculture was born in the laboratory of Giessen, it grew into strength at the experimental station of Rothamsted. To Sir John Lawes and his colleague Sir Henry Gilbert (himself a pupil of Liebig) farmers of to-day owe an incalculable debt. By their experiments, continued for more than half a century, the main principles of agricultural science were established; the objects, method, and effects of manuring were ascertained; the scientific bases for the rotation of crops were explained; and the results of food upon animals in producing meat, milk, or manure were tested and defined. On their work has been built the modern fabric of British agriculture.

   With increased knowledge of the wants of plant or animal life came the supply of new means to meet those requirements. Artificial manure may be roughly distinguished from dung as purchased manures. Of these fertilising agencies, farmers in 1837 already knew soot, bones, salt, saltpetre, hoofs and horns, shoddy, and such substances as marl, clay, lime and chalk. But they knew little or nothing of nitrate of soda, of Peruvian guano, of superphosphates, kainit, muriate of potash, rape-dust, sulphate of ammonia, or basic slag. Though nitrate of soda was introduced in 1835, and experimentally employed in small quantities, it was in 1850 still a novelty. The first cargo of Peruvian guano was consigned to a Liverpool merchant in 1835; but in 1841 it was still so little known that only 1,700 tons were imported; six years later (1847) the importation amounted to 220,000 tons. Bones were beginning to be extensively used. Their import value rose from £14,395 in 1823 to £254,600 in 1837. As originally broken in small pieces with a hammer, they were slow in producing their effect; but the rapidity of their action was enormously increased by grinding them to a coarse meal. Rape-dust was not known in the South of England at the beginning of the Victorian era. In 1840 Liebig suggested the treatment of bones with sulphuric acid, and in 1843 Lawes began the manufacture of superphosphate of lime, and set up his works at Bow. So far the chemists; the next step was taken by geologists. At the suggestion of Professor Henslow, the same treatment to which bones were already subjected was applied to coprolites, and the rich deposits of Cambridgeshire and other counties, as well as kindred forms of mineral phosphates, imported from all parts of the world, were similarly "dissolved." Even Peruvian guano was subjected to the same treatment. Another important addition to the wealth of fertilising agencies was made by Odams, who about 1850 discovered the manurial value of the blood and garbage of London slaughter-houses, mixed with bones and sulphuric acid.

   It is in the means of applying appropriate manures to lands which are differently composed, and to crops which vary in their special requirements, that modern farmers enjoy exceptional advantages over their predecessors. The active competition of rival manufacturers assisted the adoption of the new fertilisers. Many men, who would not listen to the lectures of professors, or read the articles of chemical experts, were worried by persistent agents for the sale of patent manures into giving them a trial. Indirectly, their use led to clean farming. A farmer who had paid £10 a ton for manure was unwilling to waste half its value on wet ill-drained land. He was less likely to allow it to fertilise weeds, and the more ready to buy a machine to distribute it carefully. Thus, as consequences of purchased fertilisers, followed the extensive use of the drain-pipe, the drill, the hand-hoe, and the horse-hoe. Yet chemical science did not at once fulfil the sanguine expectations which were formed of its capacity in the early "Fifties." The confident hope that the specific fertility extracted by a crop could be restored by a corresponding manure was scarcely confirmed by experience; and many a farmer did himself as much harm as good by the application of fertilisers which were unsuited to his land.

   Manure and drainage acted and reacted upon one another: the one encouraged the other. Previous rules of successive cropping were revolutionised; more varied courses were gradually and universally introduced. The old exhausting system of two or three crops and a bare fallow was abandoned when land had been drained, and fertilisers, portable, cheap and abundant, were placed at the command of the farmer. Without manure the attempt to grow roots or clover failed; their introduction only protracted the shift, and aggravated the difficulty of inevitable exhaustion. Now, however, the principle was gradually established that he who put most into his land got most out. Farmers recognised by experience, when the means were at their disposal, that, on the one hand, if they ruined their land their land ruined them, and that, on the other hand, only those who have lathered can shave. It was in readiness to invest capital in the land that one of the chief differences between the earlier race of agriculturists and the modern type of farmer became most conspicuous. The main objects of the former were to feed their families and avoid every possible outlay of cash. Hard-living and hard-working, they rarely thought of spending sixpence on manure, still less on cattle food to make it. They gave little to the land and received little. The consequent loss in the national means of subsistence can scarcely be exaggerated. Modern farmers, on the other hand, not only purchased thousands of tons of artificial fertilisers. They also bought for their live-stock vast quantities of feeding-stuff, which supplemented their own produce. Roots, clover, beans, barley-meal, hay, chaff, as well as artificial purchased food, were supplied to the sheep and cattle, which once had only survived the winter as bags of skin and bone. Just as guano from Peru was turned into English corn, or bones from the Pampas into English roots, so the Syrian locust-pod, the Egyptian bean, the Indian corn, or the Russian linseed were converted into English meat. The gain to the nation was immense, and to the farmer it was not small. The return on his money was quickened. He sold his stock to the butcher twice within the same time which was formerly needed to prepare them once, and that less perfectly. At the same time his command of manure was trebled in quantity and quality, and on clay lands his long-straw muck was of special value.

   The changes which have been noticed in modern farming necessitated more frequent operations of tillage, which, without mechanical inventions would have been too costly to be possible. Here, again, science came to the aid of the farmer, and supplied the means of making his labour cheaper, quicker, and more certain. The Royal Agricultural Society may legitimately pride itself on the useful part which it has played in introducing to the notice of agriculturists the new appliances which mechanical skill has placed at their service. Yet, when the Society was founded, none of its promoters foresaw the importance of the mechanical department. At the Oxford show in 1839 one gold medal was awarded for a collection of implements; three silver medals were allotted; and a prize of five pounds was given for " a paddle plough for raising potatoes." At the show at Gloucester in 1853, 2,000 implements were exhibited. The modern system of farming had, in the interval of fourteen years, built up a huge industry employed in providing the agricultural implements that it required.

   In tilling the land, sowing, harvesting, and marketing their crops, modern farmers command a choice of effective implements for which their predecessors knew no substitute. Between 1837 and 1874, ploughs in every variety, light in draught, efficient, adaptable to all sorts of soil, were introduced. Harrows suited for different operations on different kinds of land, scarifiers, grubbers, cultivators, clod-crushers, came into general use. Steam supplied its motive power to the cultivator (1851-6) and to the plough (1857). As an auxiliary in wet seasons, or in scarcity of labour, or on foul land, or to backwardness of preparation, the aid of steam may be invaluable. But few farmers can afford to own both horse-power and steam-power, and without horses they cannot do. The time may, however, be near at hand when agriculturists may find it not only invaluable, but indispensable, to rely on an arm that never slackens, never tires, and never strikes. Corn and seed drills deposited the seed in accurate lines, and at that uniform depth which materially promotes the uniformity of sample so dear to barley growers. Rollers and land-pressers consolidated the seed-bed. Manure drills distributed fertilisers unknown to farmers in 1837. Horse-hoes gained in popularity by improved steerage gear. Crosskill's Beverley reaper was followed within the next twenty years by lighter and more convenient machines. Mowing machines, haymakers, horse-rakes, shortened the work of the hay-field. Light carts or waggons superseded their heavy, broad-wheeled predecessors. Elevators lessened the labour of the harvesters in the yard. Threshing and winnowing machines had been invented in the eighteenth century. But in the South of England, partly perhaps from the difficulty of supplying labourers with winter work, the flail was still almost universal for threshing. From 1850 onwards, however, steam began to be applied as a motive power to machines, and within the next ten years several makers were busily competing in the manufacture of steam-driven barn-machinery, which threshed the corn, raised the straw to the loft, winnowed and dressed the grain, divided it according to quality, delivered it into sacks ready for market, and set aside the tailings for pigs and poultry. Nor did mechanical science neglect the live-stock industry, the development of which, in connection with corn-growing, was a feature of the period. Here, too, machinery economised the farmer's labour. He already knew the turnip-cutter and the chaff-cutter; but now the same engine which superseded the flail, pumped his water, ground his corn, crushed his cake, split his beans, cut his chaff, pulped his turnips, steamed and boiled his food. Without the aid of mechanical invention farming to-day would be at an absolute standstill. No farmer could find, or if he found could pay, the staff of scarce and expensive labour without which in 1837 agricultural produce could not be raised, secured, and marketed.

   The improvements which have been indicated were not the work of a day. On the contrary, during the first few years of the reign--the only period passed under Protection--progress was neither rapid nor unchecked. Farmers in general were preparing for high farming; they had not yet adopted its practices. Whatever advance had been made between 1837 and 1846 was probably lost in the five succeeding years. Abundant materials exist for comparison. On the one side are the Reports of the Reporters to the old Board of Agriculture (1793-1815); and the Reports to the successive Commissions (1815-36); on the other, there are the Reports published in the early numbers of the Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society, the evidence given before the Select Committee of 1848 on tenant-right and agricultural customs, the letters of Caird to The Times in 1850-1, afterwards embodied in his English Agriculture in 1850-1, and the letters of the Commissioner to the Morning Chronicle during the same period. It is plain that in 1846 no universal progress had been effected; that many landowners had made no effort to increase the productiveness of their land; that high farming was still the exception; that the new resources were not yet generally utilised; and that more than half the owners and occupiers of the land had made but little advance on the ideas and practices of the eighteenth century. Another period of disaster, short but severe, forced home the necessary lessons, and ushered in the ten years, 1853-62, which were the golden age of English agriculture.

   The railway manias and their collapse in 1845-7 had depressed every industry. The failure of the potato crop in 1845-6 caused appalling famine, and led to the Repeal of the Corn Laws. When in 1846 Protection was abandoned for Free Trade, an agricultural panic was the result. Caird's pamphlet on High Farming . . . the best Substitute for Protection (1848) pointed out the true remedy. But for the moment he preached in the wilderness. The discovery of guano and the abolition of the Brick and Timber Duties seemed no adequate set-off to the anticipated consequences of Free Trade in grain. Agriculturists predicted the ruin of their industry, and their prophecies seemed justified by falling prices in 1848-50. Many landlords and tenants had been encouraged by Protection to gamble in land. Extravagant rents had been fixed, which were not justified by increased produce. Caird calculated in 1850 that rentals had risen 100 per cent. since 1770, while the yield of wheat per acre had only risen 14 per cent. from 23 to 26¾ bushels. In 1850 wheat stood at the same price which it had realised eighty years before (40s. 3d.). On the other hand, butter, meat, and wool had risen respectively 100 per cent., 70 per cent., and 100 per cent. The great advance which had been made was, in fact, in live-stock. Competition in farms had been reckless, and the consequences were inevitable when prices showed a downward tendency. Here and there rents were remitted, but few were reduced. Clay farmers, as before, were the worst sufferers; dairy and stock farmers escaped comparatively lightly. But the loss was widespread. Much land was thrown on the hands of landlords, and efforts were made to convert a considerable area of arable into pasture.

   From 1853 onwards, however, matters rapidly righted themselves. Gold discoveries in Australia and California raised prices; trade and manufacture throve and expanded ; the Free Trade panic subsided; courage was restored. The Crimean War closed the Baltic to Russian corn. During the "Sixties," while the Continent and America were at war, England enjoyed peace. The seasons were uniformly favourable; harvests, except that of 1860, were good, fair, or abundant; the wheat area of 1854, as estimated by Lawes, rose to a little over four million acres; imports of corn, meat, and dairy produce supplemented, without displacing, home supplies. Even. the removal of the shilling duty on corn in 1869 produced little effect. Counteracted as it was by the demand for grain from France in 1870-71, it failed to help foreign growers to force down the price of British corn. Wool maintained an extraordinarily high price. Lincoln wool, for instance, rose from 13d. per lb. in 1851 to 27d. in 1864. Even when corn began to decline in value, meat and dairy produce maintained their price, or even advanced. Money was poured into land as the best investment for capital. Men like Mechi of Tiptree Hall, who had made fortunes in trade, competed for farms, and became enthusiastic exponents of their theories of scientific agriculture. Rentals rose rapidly; yet still farmers made money. Holdings were enlarged and consolidated; farmhouses became labourers' cottages; a brisk trade was carried on in machinery. High hopes were entertained of steam. Enormous and, as has since been proved, excessive sums were spent on farm buildings. Drainage was carried out extensively, and it was now that the general level of farming rose rapidly towards the best standard of individual farmers in 1837. Crops reached limits which production has never since exceeded. and probably, so far as anything certain can be predicted of the unknown, never will exceed.

   During the period from 1853 to 1874 little attention was in England paid to improvements in dairying. But in live-stock progress was great and continuous. The advance was the more remarkable as it was made in the face of outbreaks of the rinderpest, pleuro-pneumonia, and foot-and-mouth diseases. Foot-and-mouth disease had been more or less prevalent since 1839, and pleuropneumonia since 1840. But the scourge of rinderpest in 1865, commonly called the cattle-plague, compelled energetic action. In stamping out the pest the two other diseases were nearly extinguished, so that good results flowed from a disaster which caused widespread ruin. The multiplication of shows encouraged competition; stock-breeding became a fashion, and "pedigree" a mania among men of wealth.

   It was in cattle and sheep that the improvement was most clearly marked, though neither horses nor pigs were neglected. Not only did Shorthorns, Herefords, and Devons attain the highest standard of excellence in symmetry, and quality, but other breeds, now almost as well-known, were rapidly brought to perfection. Especially is this true of the Aberdeen-Angus, the Sussex, Ayrshire, and Channel Island breeds.' Other breeds were similarly improved by societies and the compilation of herd-books. Thus the Black cattle of South Wales and the Norfolk and Suffolk Red Polled breed have had their herd-books since 1874. In sheep the improvement was, perhaps, even more striking. The historic Leicesters, Cotswolds, and Southdowns still held their own, but other breeds made rapid strides in the popular favour. The improved Lincolns, the Oxford Downs, Hampshire Downs, and Shropshires are almost creations of the period. Between 1866 and 1874 the number of cattle in Great Britain rose from under five millions to over six millions, and sheep had increased to over thirty millions in 1874. Nor was there only an increase in numbers. The average quality was greatly improved, and good sheep and cattle were widely distributed.