Agricultural shows under favourable weather conditions are always popular and well-attended.  The large exhibitions of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, the Bath and West of England, and the Royal Counties, especially attract immense crowds; much business in novel implements, machinery, seeds, and artificial fertilizers, was done when times were good, and the towns in which the shows are held benefit by a large increase in general trade.  The weather, however, is the arbiter as to the attendance, upon which the financial result of the show depends.

In 1879, the last of the miserable decade that ruined thousands of farmers all over the country with almost continuous wet seasons, poor crops, and wretched prices, the Royal Agricultural Society held its show at Kilburn.  The ground had been carefully prepared and adapted for the great show with the usual liberal outlay; the work for next year’s show always commencing as soon as the show of the current year is over; but the site was situated on the stiff London clay, and, after weeks of summer rains and the traffic caused by collecting the heavy engines and machinery and the materials used in the construction of the sheds and buildings, the ground was churned into a quagmire of clay and water, so that in places it was impassable, and some of the exhibits were isolated.  Thousands of wattled hurdles were purchased in Hampshire, and laid flat on the mud along the main routes to the tents and sheds, but they were quickly trodden in out of sight.  Many ponderous engines were bogged on their way to their appointed places; nothing could move them, and they remained looking like derelict wrecks, plastered with mud, sunk unevenly above the axles of their wheels.

I attended the show and shall never forget the scene of disaster.  One afternoon the Prince of Wales—­the late King Edward—­and a Royal party made a gallant attempt, in carriages, to see the principal exhibits, and succeeded, by following a carefully selected and guarded route.  The crowd was dense by the side of the track, and people were making a harvest by letting out chairs to stand on, so as to get a view of the procession, with cries of, “’Ere you are, sir; ’ere you are, warranted not to sink in more than a mile!” Outside the show-yard, too, the streets were lined with long rows of nondescripts, scraping the adhesive clay off the shoes of the people leaving the show.

I had a pocket of my hops on exhibition entered in the Worcester class, and had great difficulty in getting near it.  I found the shed at last, deserted and surrounded by water, with a pool below the benches on which the hops were staged.  My pocket was sold straight from the show-yard, and when my factor sent in the account, I found that the pocket had gained no less than seventeen pounds from the damp to which it had been subjected since it left my premises, about ten days previously; hops, at that time, were worth about 1s. a pound, so that the increased value more than balanced all expenses.