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 implement.
In 1840 the Society was granted a charter under the title of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, and its career since then has been one of continued usefulness, and forms a prominent feature in the agricultural history of the times.