Report to the General Meeting, iii 



The arrangements for the Country Meeting at Lewes, in the 

 middle of July next, are nearly completed. The entries of Imple- 

 ments for exhibition and trial at this Meeting exceed in amount 

 those made for any former occasion ; and the entries of Live 

 Stock, although not yet closed, promise to be equally numerous. 

 The Council have adopted this year new regulations for the 

 nomination and selection of the Judges of Stock ; and they have 

 limited the duties of the Veterinary Inspector to a general exami- 

 nation of the animals in reference to contagious or infectious 

 disease, and to such special investigation on doubtful points, as 

 the Judges in considering their awards may think proper to direct 

 his attention. They have concluded their arrangements in the 

 show-yard at Lewes for such an exhibition of Poultry as may, 

 in their opinion, best promote competition among those varieties 

 of breed which have been found by experience to be most pro- 

 fitable in an agricultural point of view ; and for the purpose of 

 enabling cottagers to compete for the Prizes in this department, 

 the Council have reduced the non-Members' exhibition-fee from 

 ten shillings to half-a-crown. The Council have accepted the 

 invitation of the authorities of Gloucester to hold the Country 

 Meeting of next year for the South- Wales District, in that city. 



The Chemical Investigations instituted by the Society are in a 

 state of active and favourable progress in the laboratory of Pro- 

 fessor Way, the Consulting Chemist to the Society; w^ho has already 

 this season delivered before the Members two interesting Lectures 

 on the peculiar agency of certain soils in promoting the supply 

 of manuring matter as food to plants, and on the light thro^vn by 

 the agricultural principles established more than a century ago 

 by the celebrated Jethro Tull, on practical results obtained at the 

 present day under certain conditions of soil and culture. Mr. 

 Trimmer, the author of the Society's Prize Essay on Agricultural 

 Geology, has also favoured the Members with a Lecture on the 

 Geological Distribution of Soils throughout the Country ; a subject 

 of much practical importance to the Farmer who is desirous at any 

 time of transferring analogically the system of one district to 

 another locality identical with it in the circumstance of soil : a 



U 2 



