featured Irish pianist Hugh Tinney. The RDS became the main venue for Feis Ceoil in 1983 onward. In 2003 offered its first RDS Music Bursary of €10,000 to one of the winners of selected Feis Ceoil senior competitions. The RDS Music Bursary currently offers two prizes, one of €15,000 and the RDS Jago Award of €5,000. Both prizes also offer performance engagements. An additional prize, the RDS Collins Memorial Performance Award is given to a former Music Bursary winner each year, offering them a professional performance opportunity with Blackwater Valley Opera Festival. Agriculture Agriculture has been a persistent theme of endeavour since the foundation of the Dublin Society. In its first eighteen months, the Society reprinted or published up-to-date material on the latest agricultural innovations, such as Jethro Tull's book on Tillage, a paper 'on improvement of flax by changing the soil' and 'a new method of draining marshy and boggy lands'. The Society followed this in the year to come with further publications on grass cultivation, saffron planting, drainage, management of hops, bee management, wool production and tillage. They also held demonstrations on how to use newly designed farm machinery. Forestry was encouraged from an equally early stage with records of the Society showing that premiums were increasingly awarded for afforestation from 1742 onwards. Between 1766 and 1806 over 55 million trees were planted in Ireland on foot of the Society's initiatives. The genesis of Dublin's Botanic Gardens can be found in the minute books of the Dublin Society as far back as 1732. From this time onwards, the Dublin Society sporadically leased land around the city to conduct agricultural and botanic experiments and initiatives. In 1790, enabled by funding from the Irish Parliament, the Society leased land in Glasnevin with the intent of making the lands ready for delivering public education on botany. It appointed a professor of Botany to oversee the gardens along with an experienced head gardener from Scotland. With the completion of offices and greenhouses in 1799, the Botanic Gardens, Dublin were opened in 1800 and remained in the care of the Society until 1877 when they were transferred over to the State. In 1845 the early signs of potato blight that would go on to have a devastating effect on Ireland were detected by the RDS in the Botanic Gardens. The Society offered a prize of £20 for the best research on the poorly