The agricultural societies which hold their annual meetings at this
season do not command their former degree of attention. They are decaying bodies, and irreverent jesters make merry with the infirmities of their moribund condition. If they are noticed at all, it is for the dim instinctive glimpses which they occasion- ally show of a better time in store, when protection and all care for it shall be fairly forgotten in the strength and vigour of fully developed agricultural science. One rather turns from these an- tique incorporations as if they were something that scarcely per- tains to agricultural affairs in any practical sense ; looking for more significant indications in more influential quarters, such as the gathering of agricultural experimentalists at the mansion of Sir Robert Peel, or to the lectures on practical agriculture which Lord Clarendon is so wisely and beneficently instituting in Ire- land. The conclusion indicated by the conduct of our most acute statesmen is, that whether it is to supply a substitute for pro- tection in English agriculture, or to redeem Ireland from her beg- gary, the immediate object must be to promote the infant activity of theoretical science as applied to practical agriculture.
