620 The late Sir B. T. Brandreth Gihhs. 
threatening illness and suffering that Sir Brandreth accepted the 
distinguished honour of the Presidency of the Society. On 
looking through the minutes of the monthly meetings from first 
to last during his year, at all of which he presided, there is little 
in the public reports which appears to indicate any active inter- 
ference on his part. The great machine now moves along on 
the safe lines which it largely owes to the system and organi-: 
zation in which he had originally so large a share. His thanks 
on taking office referred with modesty to his past connection 
with the Society. His thanks on resigning it at Shrewsbury, 
, referred with satisfaction not only to the cordial assistance 
J which he had received from all its office-bearers, but to the 
prosperous condition in which the Society remained, and to the 
' enactment during the previous year of the Contagious Diseases 
' (Animals) Act, in the passing of which all the members of the 
■ Society had so great an interest. 
The President of the Royal Agricultural Society of England 
! was the guest of Mr. H. M. Jenkins at its Annual Meeting in 
' 1884, at Shrewsbury, representing the district lying between 
' Staffordshire and South Wales ; and the Secretary of the Society 
thus had the satisfaction of offering that loyalty and hospitality 
; to his former colleague, then his Agricultural Chief, which, but 
' for the President's indisposition, would have been accepted from 
, the late Sir Watkin and Lady Williams Wynn. 
; Sir Brandreth Gibbs was, as already said, the youngest son 
. of Mr. Thomas Gibbs of Ampthill, Beds, and Brompton Lodge, 
Middlesex. His mother was Sarah Prosser, daughter of the late 
Mr. Thoswihan Brandreth, J.P., of Houghton Hall, Beds ; and 
he was thus descended on the maternal side from Sir Edward 
Atkyns, Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer, who died in 1784. 
He was born on the 8th of January in the year 1821. In 1870 
he married Catharine Mary, daughter of the late Mr. R. Gibbs 
Jackson, of Everton, Lancashire, who, with two sons ^ind two 
' daughters, survives him. A long and painful illness, borne with 
great patience, partly even during the year of his Presidency, 
; terminated in his death on the 2nd of June, 1885. The por- 
I trait which accompanies this short Memoir is from a photo- 
; graph taken in his sixty-second year. It is pleasantly and 
' satisfactorily recognizable. 
I 
