Rcpoi-t to the General Meeting. vii 
United Kingdom and foreign countries, claiming the prize offered 
bj the Society. Each of these claimants professes to supply a 
manure equal in fertilising properties to Peruvian guano, at a 
price not exceeding 5/. per ton, and in quantities sufficient for 
all demands. Before, liowever, the Council can proceed to the 
consideration of these claims, they require a compliance with all 
the conditions under which the prize was offered ; and until the 
most undeniable evidence of the true value of any competing 
manure has been produced, and subsequently tested, if necessary, 
by special trials, the Society may feel assured that the Council 
will take no step on this important subject that may tend in any 
degree to mislead its Members. Professor Way, the Consulting 
Chemist to the Society, has recently delivered before the Mem- 
bers a lecture on the Manufacture of Artificial Manures, highly 
suggestive of sources whence supplies of manuring matter may 
be derived, and of improved modes of its manufacture into arti- 
ficial mixtures for special crops. Pie reports from his own expe- 
rience that the amount of adulteration in guano and other 
manures at the present time is greater than at any former period 
during his connexion with the Society, the adulterating material 
amounting in many cases to three-fourths of the whole compound 
sold to farmers as genuine manure. 
The Council, in conclusion, congratulate the Members on the 
clear gain of 254 more names on its list at the present time, than 
at the same date in last year ; and they are assured that the 
Society will not on this occasion review its own prosperity, and 
the gradual fulfilment of its practical and scientific objects, with 
less satisfaction when informed, that the collateral progress of the 
same national cause of agricultural improvement is advancing 
witli equal steps in the Sister-Kingdoms of the empire. 
By order of the Council, 
JAMES HUDSON, 
Secretary, 
