Report to the General Meeting. v 
Monday the 17th of July, the Council anticipate a large and im- 
portant agricultural assemblage. The entries of Implements and 
Machinery are as numerous as in former years ; and their trial 
will on that occasion for the first time be open, under certain 
regulations, to the public, from the noon of Tlmrsday in the pre- 
vious week. The Dinner of the Society will take place in a 
pavilion constructed to accommodate 800 persons. The Council 
last year appointed a Committee to report suggestions on the 
subject of tliat over-fed condition of animals, which in many in- 
stances at previous Meetings had been animadverted upon as 
being inconsistent with their value as stock intended for breeding 
purposes. The arrangements, however, made by that Committee, 
have not attained the object in view. The disqualifications pro- 
nounced at Gloucester were not eventually confirmed in every 
case ; animals apparently over- fed at the time, having subse- 
quently been proved to be breeding stock. The Council have 
therefore reverted to the Society's original rule of placing on the 
Judges of the Show tlie responsibility of awarding the prizes to 
those animals which in their opinion are best adapted for the 
purposes of breeding. Professor Simonds, the Veterinary In- 
spector of the Society, having instituted at its Country Meetings 
a complete comparison between the certified ages of the cattle, 
sheep, and pigs, exhibited on those occasions, and the develop- 
ments of their growth, has recently delivered before the Members 
the first part of his lecture on that subject, in which he has 
shown within what limits high feeding and other causes will 
accelerate the development of the teeth in cattle ; and has thus 
furnished us with the ready means of clearing up doubts that 
have hitherto frequently arisen at the Country Meetings, in refer- 
ence to the exact age of animals competing for the prizes of the 
Society. The subject of the feeding of animals continues to 
engage the attention of Mr. Lawes, whose recent experiments, 
placed on record in the pages of the Journal, supply still further 
evidence of the labour and expense attending investigations of 
that kind ; and which can only be duly estimated by those who, 
like Mr. Lawes, have undertaken them on a large scale for the 
public good. 
