cii 
Monthly Council, July 30, 1890. 
tural Society, in consequence of the 
change of date and time of their 
Meetings. Lord Basing, who had 
been so very long connected with the 
Society, would kindly state their case. 
Lord Basing said that the matter, 
though not perhaps one of life and 
death, was yet to them a very serious 
one, in which they took the deepest 
interest, and which was most impor- 
tant for their future success. Their 
Society had been in existence for a 
great number of years. Beginning in 
a small way, they had within the last 
few years grown very considerably, 
comparing with the Bath and West 
of England, and covering the two 
counties of Hants and Berks, each 
county containing a Boyal residence ; 
and Her Majesty the Queen was a 
patron and subscriber. For twenty- 
five years they had continued in 
uninterrupted success, and particu- 
larly for the last moiety of that period. 
There was no interruption to the 
continuous improvement in their 
numbers, in their exhibitions, and in 
the credit which they got from the 
press and the public, until the un- 
fortunate year when, on the occasion 
of the jubilee of the " Royal " Society, 
that Society changed the habitual 
period of their meetings from the 
early part of July to the third week 
in June. This week had been the 
meeting-time of the Royal Counties 
from the first, and no interruption 
had occurred and no difficulty had 
been felt. In their experience they 
found that week to be the most 
convenient time until two years ago, 
when the " Royal " met at Windsor, in 
the district of the Royal Counties, on 
the occasion of their jubilee. The con- 
sequences of that were disastrous to 
the Meeting which the Royal Counties 
held the same year at Horsham. To 
their surprise, the "Royal" Society, 
having changed the period of their 
Meeting from July to June in that 
year, continued the same course in 
the year which followed, viz., this 
year at Plymouth, and the results to 
the Royal Counties were also very 
disastrous. He attributed their losses 
in these two years to the fact that 
they followed instead of preceded 
the Meeting of the " Royal " Society. 
It was known that the breeders of 
stock and the exhibitors of imple- 
ments, whose assistance they desired 
to have, looked to the " Royal " as 
the culmination — the acme of the 
agricultural year. Many exhibitors 
withdrew from competition after 
that date, and, especially, the 
foreigners went away as soon as 
the " Royal " had held its Show. He 
appealed to that most representative 
meeting of the "Royal" Council to 
decide this question, not exclusively 
on the point of personal convenience' 
of any of the leading members of the 
Council, but to decide it in the 
interest of the agricultural com- 
munity of the whole kingdom. It 
might be that the "Royal" Society 
would desire to absorb within itself 
all the duties and all the functions 
which appertained to smaller societies, 
but he hardly thought that that would 
be found to be the case, but that they 
would take a large and liberal view 
of their position, and feel that they 
were responsible in a way for agri- 
cultural shows of all kinds, which, as 
they knew, had been conducted with 
constantly growing success. It would 
be a calamity if the Royal Counties 
or the Bath and West were hindered 
in the further success of what had 
hitherto been a prosperous career. 
To show some of the points which he 
had indicated, he might mention that 
previous to the year 1889 the Meetings 
of the Royal Counties Society were 
uniformly held in the third week in 
June. There was only one show 
during the whole of that period which 
resulted in a loss, and that was in the 
year when the Queen's Jubilee took 
place.with which of course the Society 
had nothing to do. Each of the shows 
since the change of date had resulted 
in a considerable loss. During the 
last two years, when the " R»yal " had 
held its show in the third week of 
June instead of in July, as hid been 
customary for fifty years, the gate 
money for the Royal Counties Show 
had seriously fallen off, being 30 per 
cent, below the average of the six 
previous years. But a point interest- 
ing to agriculturists was that the 
number of absent exhibits in the 
stock classes had largely increased 
since the change of date. The num- 
ber of entries which had been 
received, but which on the opening 
day of the show held in 1889 were 
