think the comforts of the peasantry around you could be increased,
their health better secured, and their general happiness promoted?"
The Marquis of Hastings gladly became patron, and ever since the
Government has made a grant to the Society. His wife showed such an
interest in its progress that the members obtained her consent to
sit to Chinnery for her portrait to fill the largest panel in the
house at Titigur. Lord Hastings added the experimental farm, formed
near Barrackpore, to the Botanic Garden, with an immediate view to
its assisting the Agricultural Society in their experiments and
pursuits. The Society became speedily popular, for Carey watched
its infancy with loving solicitude, and was the life of its
meetings. In the first eighty-seven years of its existence seven
thousand of the best men in India have been its members, of whom
seven hundred are Asiatics. Agriculturists, military and medical
officers, civilians, clergy, and merchants, are represented on its
roll in nearly equal proportions. The one Society has grown into
three in India, and formed the model for the Royal Agricultural
Society of England, which was not founded till 1838.

Italy and Scotland alone preceded Carey in this organisation, and he
quotes with approbation the action of Sir John Sinclair in 1790,
which led to the first inquiry into the state of British
agriculture. The Transactions which Carey led the Society to
promise to publish in English, Bengali, and Hindostani, have proved
to be only the first of a series of special periodicals representing
Indian agriculture generally, tea, and forestry. The various
Governments in India have economic museums; and the Government of
India, under Lord Mayo, established a Revenue and Agricultural
Department expanded by Lord Curzon. Carey's early proposal of
premiums, each of a hundred rupees, or the Society's gold medal, for