IM 



THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



NORFOLK AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



The annual meeting of this Society was held on Satur- 

 day, Jan. 5, at Norwich. There was a large attendance of 

 the members of the Society, and the proceedings appeared 

 to excite considerable interest. The Kev. P. Gui'don was 

 called to the chair. 



The acting Secretary (Mr. E. C. Bailey) read the usual 

 abstract of accounts, from which it appeared that the sub- 

 scriptions during the past year had been £426 3s. ; the 

 subscribers' premiums £65 ; the receipts at the gate on 

 the day of exhibition £97 15s.; and the total income (in- 

 cluding a balance of £199 5s. Id. at the commencement of 

 the year) £818 Os. 8d. The disbursements had been — 

 premiums £409 ; silver medals £30 lis. ; expenses of ex- 

 hibition, (fcc, £87 10s. 4d. ; salary of acting Secretary 

 £40; miscellaneous charges £40 18s. 7d. : leaving a 

 balance of £216 Os. 6d. 



Mr. Claee Eead congratulated the Society on the state 

 of its finances, and also on its general management. Last 

 year the Society expended £30 more in prizes, and there 

 was stiU an increase of £17 in the balance in hand. The 

 local public were beginning to appreciate the Society 

 more ; for while the receipts at the exhibition at Swaffham 

 in 1851 were only £21 9s. 6d., in 1859 they were £74 7s. 

 6d. The receipts again at the Norwich show in 1852 were 

 only £37, while in 1800 they were £97 15s. The Society, 

 however, still failed to come quite up to the SuftoLk Asso- 

 ciation as regards the support received from the public ; 

 for while Ipswich gave £30, Norwich — the capital of East 

 Anglia — gave nothing ; and while the Norfolk Society took 

 £97 at its exliibition, the Suffolk Society, in the little 

 town of Eramlingham, collected £275. 



Mr. W. BuEKOuGHES, referring to the election of a 

 president for the ensuing year, stated that an application 

 had been made to the Earl of Orford, In reply, his Lord- 

 ship wrote : " I am much flattered by your letter, but am 

 so uncertain as to my plans, that I must beg leave to de- 

 cline the offer." It appeared that his Lordship's health was 

 in such a state that he doubted whether he should be able 

 to fulfil the duties proposed to be assigned to him. Per- 

 haps, however, the noble Lord would be well enough to 

 attend. 



It was agreed, after some discussion, to elect his Lord- 

 ship on the chance of his being able to modify the resolu- 

 tion expressed in his letter. 



The next business was the election of members to sup- 

 ply the vacancies in the committee. Mr. Woods proposed 

 that Mr. E. B. Aylmer should take the place of Mr. Bar- 

 thropp (of Suffolk), disqualified by reason of his not hav- 

 ing attended any meeting during the past year. An ob- 

 jection was urged that there were already two members of 

 the Aylmer family on the committee, but Mr. Woods re- 

 joined that they were all good breeders of stock, and 

 pressed his motion, which was carried. Mr. J. Hudson, 

 of Castleacre, stating that he was now so deaf as to be 

 unable to hear what was going on, his son was elected in 

 his stead. The other retiring members of the committee 

 were re-elected. 



The Honorary Secretaries (the Eev. P. Gurdon and Mr. 

 W. Burroughes) were re-elected, and the Acting Secretary 

 (Mr Bailey) was also re-appointed. Mr. Bailey declined 

 an increase of salary. 



Mr. Claee Eead then brought forward a motion of 

 ■which he had given notice, to the effect that the next an- 

 nual meeting should be held at East Dereham, instead of 

 Swaftham. Mr. Eead said a wish was generally ex- 

 pressed at the Swaftham meeting in 1857, that the Society 

 should try some other locality, and that Dereham should 

 be the place selected. Time had passed on, and no notice 

 had been taken of the matter ; but, nevertheless, the pre- 

 sent arrangement was attended with much inconvenience 

 to exhibitors of stock. Of course, in olden times, when 

 there was no railroad, and when two societies existed in 

 the county, it wfts uecessary that one of them should hold 



its meeting at SwafFham; but under present circum- 

 stances — SwafFham being inconveniently sitiiated as re- 

 gards railway accommodation — he saw no reason why SwaS'- 

 ham should monopolize all the shows in the west. In pro- 

 posing that the nest meeting should be held at Dereham, he 

 had no desire to confine the society's exhibitions to that 

 town, but if the good people of West Norfolk wished it, 

 he had no objection to their shows being held alternately 

 at Swa&'liam, Dereham, or Fakenham. If one turned to 

 that very flourishing society — the Suffolk — one found that 

 it migrated from one town to the other, the meeting being 

 held every alternate year at Ipswich. He believed per- 

 sons living in the north, east, and south of Norfolk would 

 prefer Dereham as a place of meeting, and he was sure 

 that the important exhibitors from Suffolk would also pre- 

 fer that town. The change he proposed could not make 

 any difference except to gentlemen living in the imme- 

 diate neighbourhood of Swafi'ham, and he believed Messrs. 

 Brown and Aylmer wotild not mind sending their sheep a 

 few miles further, as they would be sure to take away 

 prizes to compensate them for their trouble. 

 Mr. J. Smith seconded the motion, to which 

 Mr. Woods moved a direct negative. Mr. Woods said 

 he had the greatest respect for everything which fell from 

 Mr. Eead, but he was at a loss to know what had induced 

 that gentleman to bring forward his proposition, and why 

 he had selected Dereham in place of Swafi'liam, which 

 had greater claims upon the society than even Norwich. 

 Mr. Eead ; Oh, yes — no doubt about that. 

 Mr. Woods : Then why select Swaffham as the place 

 from which to take the meeting? The Acting Secretary 

 had, he believed, taken great pains to induce the citizens 

 of Norwich to give a cup to the society, but had been 

 obliged to abandon the effort in despair ; while the people 

 of Swaflliam, on the contrai'j', had not only given a cup, 

 but were prepared to give a prize of £25, if the meeting 

 was again held in their town. This fact, and the large- 

 ness of the receipts at Swaffham, showed that there was 

 much interest felt in the society in the neighbourhood of 

 that town. Mr. Eead had not been in the habit of send- 

 ing sheep to the exliibitions of the society, or he would 

 feel the difficulty and inconvenience of sending sheep 

 twenty miles by road, especially if they had afterwards to 

 be exhibited at the Suffolk show. When the two societies 

 were amalgamated, it was agreed that the meetings shoirld 

 be held alternately at Swaft'ham and Norwich ; and he be- 

 lieved they would be told that they had no power to make 

 the alteration. If any change were made, the meeting 

 should be taken away from Norwich first ; for, with the 

 exception of the talented editor of the Norwich Mercury, 

 scarcely any of the citizens supported the society, or at- 

 tended its dinners. The society ought, he contended, to 

 ' stick to where they were stuck to." 



Mr. Hamond supported Mr. AVoods. If the members of 

 the Society wished, he said, to knock the thing up and 

 make a mistake of it altogether, the motion of Mr. Eead 

 would achieve such a result. It would have been better 

 if the gentlemen of East Norfolk had chosen a more 

 fitting time to bring the matter forward, viz., when the 

 meeting was about to be held at Norwich; they would 

 then have showed something like anxiety for the well-being 

 of the society; but now the affair took quite another 

 reading. When the two Norfolk societies were amalga- 

 mated, the West Norfolk was the stronger of the two ; cer- 

 tainly the best attended and most popular ; but the amal- 

 gamation had been a great advantage to the two divisions 

 of the county, especially to the East, for gentlemen from 

 that district liad been enabled to see better long-woolled 

 and better short-wooUed sheep than they had ever seen 

 before, and it was better for a man to judge by other 

 peoples' bushels instead of by his own, which was apt to 

 be an extremely fallacious measure (laughter). The sub- 

 scrif tiona of the memberi of the Society being now due, 



