Prize of £22.

THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE.

MAY, 1858.

PLATE I.

PORTRAIT OF MR. SAMUEL JONAS.

PLATE II.

VICTORIA; A SHORT-HORN COW.

MR. SAMUEL JONAS.

There are few better representatives of his order, than Mr. Sam. Jonas, of Ickleton. A shrewd judge and a spirited man of business, with every ability to carry out his intentions, he brings the character of the British farmer quite up to the standard of our own times. With something of the old school in his bearing and appearance, there is no one more alive to the advancement and improvement the art of agriculture must achieve. It is, indeed, from the experience of such men that we gather the only reliable test of the progress we are making. Theorists may write, and amateurs may talk, but it is the practical man who works. He flourishes or falls with the pursuit; and makes it his first duty to see what he can adopt and what he shall avoid. The farmer shuts himself up no longer in his own home and to his own prejudices. On the contrary, you find him all the world over; a farmer still, learning and sifting out all he can for the advantage of his profession.

"Sam Jones," as he is familiarly termed, is one of these-known all the world over. You see him at all our great meetings, bustling about either as one in authority, or in some other way quite as much interested in what is going on. It is not for himself alone either that he is speaking or working. On many an occasion ere this he has been one of the best champions of his class. There is moreover an independence of action and earnestness of purpose in what he does that is always sure to tell. Whether it be at a local meeting in his own county, OLD SERIES.]

or on a grand field-day in Hanover-square, there is no farmer speaks up for his fellows with more effect than Mr. Jonas. He occupies no ambiguous position, but is thoroughly identified with those he professes to feel for. And so when he says, the farmers "must have this," or "they wont have that," the Council know it is no idle boast or vain prayer they are now hearing of.

Mr. Jonas-like his relative Mr. Jonas Webbis a native of Suffolk. He was born at Great Thurlow, in that county, on the 27th of September, 1802, so that he is now in the fifty-sixth year of his age. It is, however, with the county of Cambridge that, until very recently, he has been more identified, having farmed for a number of years at Ickleton. His doings even as a public man are all more or less associated with this district. He wrote, for instance, the Prize Essay on the farming of Cambridgeshire, for the "Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society"-the farming of his own county, as it was then called. This paper was an especial favourite with the late Mr. Pusey, the then Editor of the Journal, and often cited by him as an example of what such an essay should be.

More in connection-at least by its boundarieswith his present residence, Mr. Jonas was instrumental in forming the Saffron Walden Agricultural Society, of which it is almost needless to add he is a zealous supporter. His sideboard gives evidence with what success as an exhibitor. Of the great national Society of the kingdom he [VOI, XLVIII.-No. 5.

C C