72 



THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



Prize-sheeta, certificale?, labels, admissiou- 



orders, circulars, railway-papers .. .. £ 149 5 3 



Live-atock aud implement catalogues . . . , 349 2 



Live-stock and implement award-sheets .. 29 13 



Prizes of the Society, awarded and paid . . 1594 12 

 Prizes of the Local Committee, awarded and 



paid 120 



Prize of M. Dutroae, awarded and paid . . 5 



Dinner-contract 200 



Uiiiner-tickets and toast-papers . . . . 2 5 



Badges for Council, stewards, and judges .. 7 18 9 

 Official staff, travelling expenses, board, and 



lodging 17 14 2 



Loss on sale of foreign and other coin. . .. 19 10 



£6612 15 11 



Mr. W. F. HoBBS drew attention to the loss sustained by 

 the dinner of the Society at Salisbury. 



Mr. Raymond Barker said that a contract was made 

 for the diuner for £200. The sale of tickets was co&ducted 

 as usual, but very feiv persons seemed disposed to buy. Only 

 £78 was received for tickets. It was, however, the moat pro- 

 fitable diuner the Society had ever had, because it involved 

 the least loss (a laugh). 



After some remarks from Mr. Moore and Mr. Slaney, 

 with reference to the annual dinners of the Society, 



Mr. Sainseury said, he would take upon himself, as a 

 Wiltshire farmer, to state that had the Council erected a 

 pavilion at Salisbury they could have found the Wiltshire 

 farmers flocking to it iu a body, and it would, no doubt, have 

 been well filled. The reason they did not go to the Council 

 Chamber at Salisbury was that they considered that they had 

 not been fairly treated in that respect — in fact, they took a 

 little huff (a laugh). 



Mr. Bullock Webster proposed, and Mr. Arkell seconded, 

 a vote of thanks to the auditors, which was agreed to ; Mr. 

 Barker and Mr. Aatbury were re-elected auditors ; and Mr, 

 Druce chosen as auditor in the room of Mr. Dyer, who retired 

 from ill health. 



Mr. Moore then addressed the meeting at some length. He 

 coraplaiued that the mode in which the accounts were presented 

 to the members was not satisfactory, and suggested that 

 a tabular statement should be prepared of the income 

 aud expenditure of the Society from the commencement, 

 together with a statement of the number of members each 

 year. He was anxious, he said, for the adoption of some plan 

 by which the farmers iu the diflferent localities mi^ht hi led 

 to take greater interest in the meetings of the Society. So 

 far as the Journal was concerned, he believed it was scarcely 

 ever seen by the majority of the farmers, and that, when they 

 did take it up, they soon \Mt it down iu despair. The articles 

 were very valuable.'no doubt, to the class o'f men who could 

 read aud understand them, and had produced beneficial effects 

 on the agriculture of thj country, but they did not bring home 

 what was wanted to the miuds of the agricultural coramuuity. 

 By what means that was to be done he left to tue cuusidcra- 

 tion of the managers of the Society. Iu his opinion, too, the 

 Smithfield Club o\ight to he amalgamated witli this society, 

 and ^the country meetings given up, substituting for them 

 a great annual metropolitan meeting iu the summer, aud 

 establishing district societies, compriaiusr three or four coun- 

 ties, such district societies to be affiliations of the great 

 central institution iu London. 



Col. Challoner said he rose for the purpose of answer- 

 ing some of the observations of Mr. Sidney, aud he thought 

 he should be able to show that the Council had not been quite 

 80 idle and so inattentive to the interests of the Society as 

 some persons might suppose. Mr. Si«lney had remarked that 

 the number of members was at one period larger than it was 

 at the prese.it moment. Aiimitting tiiat that was the case, he 

 must observe that as regarded the class of members whom 

 the Council were most anxious to secure, namely, tenant 

 farmers aud practical men, the list was i;ever before so 

 numerous as it wa^ then. Soon after the formation of the 

 Society, when members were elected, as it were, by acclama- 

 tion, he had seen thirty or forty members put down their 

 names all together at a country meeting. But what was the 

 explanation of that ? Why, that gentlemen could not attend 

 the dinner without first becoming members. The result was 



that they used to be constantly writing ten or fifteen letters 

 to persons for their subscriptions without getting any answer 

 It was then quite common for a gentleman to say, " I sub-- 

 scribed at Southampton," or " at Liverpool," as the case might 

 be ; " but I am not a member of the society now, and I shall 

 not pay any money." Iu fact, many hundreds of persons had 

 their names struck off the books because they would not keep 

 up their subscriptions. This was early iu the history of the 

 Society, up to the seventh or eighth years, perhaps, of its 

 career. The Council were prepared to give, not only the gross 

 number, but even the separate names of those who were struck 

 off under those circumstances. Mr Sidney said that if they 

 did aoand-so the number of members would be increased to 

 10,000. It might be so ; but they liked to act upon some- 

 thing like certainty, and it was certain that withiu the last 

 three or four years, or since the number of names was reduced, 

 by the process of striking off, to three or four thousand, they 

 had obtained an accession of a thousand additional and paying 

 members, and he would add that there were leas arrears in pro- 

 portion among the farmers than among the governors. (Hear), 

 It appeared to him that they could not have erred very 

 much in the management of the Society, when the Society 

 had beeu getting better known aud more popular every 

 year, and when there had been an accession of 1,000 

 paying members (Hear, hear). Again, Mr. Sidney had 

 spoken of the necessity of giving notice of the lectures. He 

 had papers there before him (The Mark Lane Express) 

 from which it appeared that in all the reports issued by Mr, 

 Hudson, the Council stated on what day Professor Way or 

 Professor Siri'n;ds would deliver a lecture, and these announce- 

 ments were uLvays forwarded to the Mark Lane Express, the 

 Gardener's Chronicle, and other agricultural journa'a; and 

 when Professor Way was il), there was a special advertisement 

 to the effect that in consequence of his illness the lecture 

 which had been announced would be postponed to a future 

 day. With regard to the Bath and West of England Society, 

 he must observe that it was no uncommon thing for children 

 to outstrip their parents — (laughter) — and if this were the 

 result of energy and vigorous management, it was a feather in 

 the cap of the society m question rather than a reason for con- 

 demning the parent institution. With regard to the churns, 

 trials had been made, but it was a very difficult matter. That 

 was his department in the Exhibition of 1851, when he was 

 for upwards of twelve hours in an atmosphere of 83 degrees. 

 His report appeared in the Journal at that time, and since that 

 period there had, he believed, been no very great variation in 

 the differeiit churns. That trial had subsequently proved to 

 be a very correct one, because the same churn — the .square 

 American churn, making from lolbs. to 201b3.of butter — was 

 found to be the best. Wiih respect to the root-cutters and 

 slicers, he might observe that at the Lincoln Show Mr. Moody 

 brought out a turnip-cutter that was tried thoroughly, and he 

 was so much pleased with it tliat he immediately bought 

 one. He had procured three of them since, and every gentle- 

 man who had seen them at bis place bad pronounced them the 

 beat that they had met with. He would add that their con- 

 sulting engineer, on being consulted the other day, recom- 

 mended the Council to offer a reward for turnip-cutters, there 

 not being one that he considered perfect. With regard to the 

 election of the^Council.he believed everyone knew that under the 

 Charter of the Society, on a certain day in May the Council 

 for the ensuing year had to be elected . Nothing could be better 

 known than that at the General Meeting iu May, the Council 

 and trustees, and the officers of the Society, had to be elected 

 by the members, ihe fact being made public, he believed, 

 through the medium of all the agricultural paperit. Mr. Moore 

 had referred to the accounts. On that subject he would detaiu 

 them only one minute. Let any gentleman present call for 

 information under any one head of expenditure — be it the 

 chemical grant, be it the veterinary grant, be it the country 

 meetings, be it the establishment charges, he would undertake 

 to find the information in a book which was before him. 



Mr. Moore said he did not for a moment question that 

 the affairs of the Society had been managed in the most perfect 

 manner possible. What he desired was, that a clear state- 

 ment of the income and expenditure should be published half- 

 yearly in the Journal. 



Col. Challoner intiinaied that what Mr. Moore required 

 had been done. 



Mr. Moore said, having examined the accounts published 



