Report upon the Exhibition of Horses at Kilburn. 565 
last meeting of the Council, to express what I feel is justly due to those who 
have I'endered us such valuable service. 
" I have the honour to lie, luy lords and gentlemen, your obedient servant 
" Albert Edward, P., President. 
"To the Council of the Eoyal Agricultural Society." 
There are things which under any disappointment leave 
pleasant memories behind, and if, as has been said, some feelings 
of mortification must arise at the thoughts of a complete success 
having been marred by the weather, yet, when to the attrac- 
tions of a surpassingly fine show of stock and implements there 
are added the visit of the Queen, the presidency of the Prince of 
Wales, the many excellent foreign exhibits, the International 
Dairy daily at work, the interesting comparative museum of old 
and modern implements, the plans of farm buildings, and many 
minor novelties, the bright side of the picture only remains, and 
distance lends a far from fictitious enchantment to the view. 
My four years of office — in one of which I much regret I was 
unable to perform my duties as Steward — having ended, I gladly 
take the opportunity of thanking my brother Stewards and all 
our officials for much kindness and ever ready help when 
required. May the sun shine brightly on them at Carlisle ! 
Holme Wood, Peterborough. 
XXII. — Report upon the Exhibition of Horses at Kilburn. By 
the Hon. Francis Lawlet. 
It was sagaciously remarked by Sydney Smith, that Providence, 
by endowing this country with an uncertain, erratic, and in- 
scrutable climate, had mercifully supplied — to quote a phrase 
from Hamlet — its " muddy-mettled " inhabitants with a never- 
failing topic of suggestive conversation. " How," asks the witty 
Canon of St. Paul's, " could a race so dull of wit and unready of 
speech as the British find material wherewith to salute each 
other in the streets, and get through the ordinary business of 
life, were it not for meteorological platitudes ? " The talk about 
the weather has, during the present year, fulfilled far more than 
the normal functions which, according to this theory, it was 
intended to subserve, inasmuch as it stands upon record that, 
until the first few days of September, there was not a single week 
of 1879 during which more or less rain had not fallen. The 
absence of sun and heat, aggravated by continual downpours of 
rain and by cold winds, has already inflicted upon these islands 
a loss approximately estimated at sixty millions sterling. But 
