In the year of the South Sea bubble, a wit of the day epigrammatised
the proposal to insure horses and cattle, little thinking it would ever
be carried out. Yet that some such institution was necessary may be
gathered from the number of local clubs of this character established
all over the country. These will probably merge in some agricultural
insurance company like the above; and did this institution not take
human life into its business, it might be more successful. The laws
relating to life and to farming stock are very different, and a
company devoted to the latter would be wiser than one which blends the
assurance of agricultural property against disease, accident, fire,
lightning, and the hailstorm, with ordinary life assurance.