Although these experiment schemes were issued to the County Councils and the agricultural public generally, it was only the farmers organised in societies who were really in a position to take part in them.

Some of these experiments, indeed, could not be carried out at all except through such societies.
Both for the sake of efficiency in its educational work, and of economy in administration, the Department would be obliged to lay stress on the value of organisation.[45] But there are other reasons for its doing so: industrial, moral, and social.

In an able critique upon Bodley's _France_ Madame Darmesteter, writing in the _Contemporary Review_, July, 1898, points out that even so well informed an observer of French life as the author of that remarkable book failed to appreciate the steadying influence exercised upon the French body politic by the network of voluntary associations, the _syndicats agricoles_, which are the analogues and, to some extent, the prototypes, in France of our agricultural societies in Ireland.

The late Mr.Hanbury, during his too brief career as President of the Board of Agriculture, frequently dwelt upon the importance of organising similar associations in England as a necessary step in the development of the new agricultural policy which he foreshadowed.

His successor, Lord Onslow, has fully endorsed his views, and in his speeches is to be found the same appreciation of the exemplary self-reliance of the Irish farmers.