Meport to the General Meeting. 
vii 
means to make known in this country tlic inducements held out 
and the facilities afforded to the exhibitors of the United King:- 
dom at the Agricultural Meeting to be held next month in 
Paris ; and they have decided that six of their members shall 
form a deputation to be present on that occasion. The Council 
trust that this international gathering will be attended with the 
most favourable results to the agriculture of the two nations 
as well as to the cordial understanding now so happily subsisting 
between them. 
The Council have continued to be favoured by the Earl of 
Clarendon with copies of successive despatches received at the 
Foreign Office from her Majesty's ministers and consuls abroad, 
reporting the result of their inquiries and researches connected 
with the occurrence of guano or the nitrates in tropical districts. 
Some of these communications have been of an important cha- 
racter, and have referred to discoveries of extensive deposits of 
those valuable manures, as well as to the occurrence of an un- 
limited supply of native carbonate of soda in South America. 
His Lordship has conveyed to the Council an assurance that 
Avhatever facilities or privileges are granted to other countries 
by the Governments within whose territories these newly-dis- 
covered deposits occur, will be claimed by her Majesty's Govern- 
ment on behalf of the agricultural and commercial communities 
of the United Kingdom. 
By order of the Council, 
JAMES HUDSON, 
Secretary. 
