IV Report to the General Meeting. 



been favoured by Professor Ilenfrey, of King's College, with a 

 lecture delivered before the members, on the nutrition of plants, 

 elucidating the organization and functions by which they derive 

 and assimilate the nutriment obtained by them from various 

 sources. 



The Council have again to record their sense of the interest 

 taken by the Earl of Clarendon in promoting the objects of the 

 Society, by obtaining from the Ministers and Consuls abroad not 

 only information on the occurrence of guano and other manuring 

 substances, but also details connected with the progress of pleuro- 

 pneumonia and contagious typhus among the cattle in different 

 parts of Europe. The Council having received from the Royal 

 Agricultural Improvement Society of Ireland a suggestion that it 

 would be desirable for the three national Agricultural Societies 

 of the United Kingdom to join in despatching abroad a special 

 Veterinary Inspector, for the purpose of ascertaining the exact 

 nature of the contagious typhus, they at once concurred with the 

 Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland in adopting that 

 suggestion ; and on the 9th of last month Professor Simonds, 

 furnished with a circular letter from the Earl of Clarendon to 

 the several Consuls of Europe, left England as the Veterinary 

 Inspector of the three National Societies, and on the 30th 

 forwarded his first communication, in which he reports that he 

 found, to a great extent, that the pleuro-pneumonia had been 

 mistaken for the severer malady of contagious typhus ; and that 

 he had to penetrate into Poland itself in order to meet with 

 cases that might furnish subjects for his study and report. He 

 expresses his firm opinion that there is, at present, no fear of 

 the contagious typhus being introduced into this country by 

 means of living animals, whatever danger may arise from the im- 

 portation of hides or other integumentary portions of slaughtered 

 cattle. 



The arrangements for the Salisbury Meeting, to be held in the 

 third week of July, are proceeding satisfactorily. A very large 

 entry is already made of implements ; and the entries for stock, 

 which close on the 1st of next month, promise to be equally 

 numerous. The implements at work will this year be presented 

 under a new arrangement, which will essentially tend to increase 

 the interest of that part of the Show. 



