558 Report of the Senior Steward of Live- Stock on the 
some risk of the state of the ground in bad weather ; but, in the 
first place, there was an amount of persistency in the bad weather 
which could never have been reasonably anticipated ; and in the 
second place, no better ground within anything like easy reach 
was to be had. The week before the Kilburn Show, the Alex- 
andra Park — considering that there was no heavy implement 
traffic during the horse show there — was in a deplorable state. 
The week after, even the light soil of Wimbledon Common 
was, during the encampment — without any implement-, and 
with but little carriage- or horse-traffic — reduced to a sea of 
mud about the camp, and locomotion was carried on, in no 
small degree, ' a la Kilburn,' on planks. 
What the condition was to which the continued wet reduced 
the ground at Kilburn mav be partly gathered from the nature 
and extent of some of the remedies invented and adopted. No 
expense or care in preparing the site had, in the first instance, 
been spared, the original cost of draining having, according to 
!Mr. Hunt's report, been about 1200/. ; to which must be added 
2200/. for levelling, turf-laying, ballast-burning, and road- 
making. This, it was hoped, would prove sufficient, and it was 
not until a few weeks before the Show that the continuous and 
increasingly heavy fall of rain, concurrently with the develop- 
ment of the preparation-traffic, gave rise to any feelings of 
apprehension. 
As the day for opening the Exhibition was near, and the 
heavy implements and machinery began to come in, without 
the hoped-for change in the weather, it became painfully ap- 
parent that the struggle to get things in their places would be 
desperate and protracted. By the end of the week preceding 
the opening, the approaches to and spaces between the imple- 
ment shedding, as well as much of the rest of the ground, was 
worked by incessant traffic into a wide sea of tenacious mud, 
through which it was impossible without a quadrupled horse- 
power to move the heavy exhibits into their places. 
The efforts made by tbe railway companies concerned to fulfil 
their undertaking to deliver the exhibits were unceasing. 
Horses in numbers were lent by other railways. Gapgs of 
men, relieving each other, worked through the night as well as 
day, and never was a vote of thanks better earned than that 
which was given at the General Meeting to the railway com- 
panies, with a special mention of Lord Richard Grosvenor, 
whose energy in organising, in conjunction with the untiring 
officials of the London and North- Western Railway, the means 
of relief to blocked-up trains or mud-bound vehicles, was fully 
recognised and appreciated. 
The following is the substance of a communication in refer- 
