23.  To the farmer who plants the greatest number (not under
     1000) of timber trees, oak, beech, ash, or elm, in hedgerows
     before December 1756, L10.

     24.  Second ditto (not under 500), L5.

     25.  To the farmer who shall raise the greatest number (not
     under 2000) of young thorn plants before December 1758, L6.

     26.  Second ditto (not under 1000), L4.

In the following year the society increased the number of its prizes to 92; in 1757 to 120, in 1758 to 138, and in 1759 to 142; and they were devoted to the encouragement of every variety of likely industry—­kid gloves, straw hats, felt hats, soap, cheese, cradles to be made of willow grown in Scotland.  One premium was offered to the person who would “cure the greatest number of smoky chimneys to the satisfaction of the society.”

The prize for the best essay on taste was won by Professor Gerard of Aberdeen, and the essay was published, and is still well known to students of metaphysics; and the prize for the best dissertation on vegetation and agriculture fell to Dr. Francis Home.  The best invention was a piece of linen made like Marseille work but on a loom, and for this L20 were awarded to Peter Brotherton, weaver in Dirleton, East Lothian.  Foulis won in 1757 the prize for the best printed book in Roman characters by his Horace, and for the best printed book in Greek characters by his Iliad; and in 1759 Professor Gerard again won a prize by his dissertation on style.

This society, while it lasted, undoubtedly exercised a most beneficial influence in developing and improving the industrial resources of Scotland.  The carpet manufacture alone rose L1000 in the year after the establishment of the prizes, and the rise was believed to be due to the stimulus they imparted.  But, useful and active and celebrated as it was, the Select Society died within ten years of its origin.  The usual explanation is that it owed its death to the effects of a sarcasm of Charles Townshend’s.  Townshend was brought to hear one of the wonderful debates, which were thought to reflect a new glory on Edinburgh, and was even elected a member of the society, but he observed when he came out that, while he admitted the eloquence of the orators, he was unable to understand a word they said, inasmuch as they spoke in what was to him a foreign tongue.  “Why,” he asked, “can you not learn to speak the English language, as you have already learnt to write it?"[88]

This was to touch Scotchmen of that period who made any pretensions to education at one of their most sensitive parts.  Scotch—­the broad dialect of Burns and Fergusson—­was still the common medium of intercourse in polite society, and might be heard even from the pulpit or the bench, though English was flowing rapidly into fashion, and the younger and more ambitious sort of people were trying their best to lose the native dialect.