r England, which sorely needed it; but even now the work was
often badly done. In some cases it was the custom for the tenant to
put in as many tiles as his landlord gave him, and they were often
merely buried. At Stratfieldsaye, for instance, where the Iron Duke
was a generous and capable landlord, the drains were sometimes a foot
deep, while others were 6 feet deep and 60 feet apart,[614] although
the soil required nothing of the kind.

Vast sums were also spent on farm-buildings, still often old and
rickety, with deficient and insanitary accommodation; in Devonshire
the farmer was bound by his lease to repair 'old mud and wooden
houses', at a cost of 10 per cent. on his rent, and there were many
such all over England. Farm-buildings were often at the extreme end
of the holding, the cattle were crowded together in draughty sheds,
and the farmyard was generally a mass of filth and spoiling manure,
spoiling because all the liquid was draining away from it into the
pool where the live stock drank; a picture, alas, often true to-day.
It was to bring the great mass of landlords and farmers into line with
those who had made the most of what progress there had been, that the
Royal Society was founded in 1838, in imitation of the Highland
Society, but also owing to the realization of the great benefits
conferred on farming during the last half-century by the exertions of
Agricultural Societies, the Smithfield Club Shows having especially
aided the breeding of live stock.

Writing on the subject of the Society, Mr. Handley[615] spoke of the
wretched modes of farming still to be seen in the country, especially
in the case of arable land, though there had been a marked improvement
in the breeding of stock. Prejudice, as ever, was rampant. Bone
manure, though in the previous twenty years it had worked wonders, was
in many parts unused. It was felt that what the English farmer needed
was 'practice with science'. The first President of the Society was
Earl Spencer, and it at once set vigorously to work, recommending
prizes for essays on twenty-four subjects, some of which are in the
first volume of the Society's Journal. Prizes were also offered for
the best draining-plough, the best implement for crushing gorse, for a
ploughing match to be held at the first country meeting of the Society
fixed at Oxford in 1839, for the best cultivated farm in Oxfordshire
and the adjacent counties, and for the invention of any new
agricultural i