viii 
Report to the General Meeting. 
The Prizes for Live Stock to be offered by the Society at the 
Taunton Meeting, next year, amount to 3165Z. The list includes 
extra classes for ponies, as well as for Exmoor, Dartmoor, and 
Somerset and Dorset horned sheep. 
The Taunton Local Committee have added to the Society's 
Prize-sheet, offers of Prizes for Devon Long-woolled Sheep, 
Butter, Cheese, and Long Wool. 
The Council have appointed a Special Committee to revise 
the list of Judges of Stock and Implements. 
The implements to be tried at Taunton, next year, are those 
connected with the hay-harvest, and include mowing and hay- 
making machines, and horse-rakes, as well as machines for 
drying hay in wet weather, sufficiently economical for practical 
purposes. In accordance with the recommendation of the 
Judges at Bedford appointed to test the inventions entered to 
compete for the Special Prize for the best Guard, or appliance, 
to the Drum of a Threshing-Machine, for preventing accidents 
to the people employed, the Council have added to the Taunton 
Prize-sheet two separate prizes, one for the best Guard to a 
Threshing-Machine, and the other for the best combined Guard 
and Feeder. 
Last June the Council represented to the Lord President (A 
the Privy Council that, in order to deal efficiently with the 
whole question of the contagious and infectious diseases of 
animals, there was urgent need of such regulations as were 
recommended by them in December, 1872 ; but that, as several 
of those recommendations would require the sanction of Parlia- 
ment to enable them to be put in force, they made some less 
extensive recommendations in view of the pressing necessity of 
dealing immediately with the then renewed outbreak of foot- 
and-mouth disease. The Privy Council, in the course^ of that 
month, issued orders having special reference to that disease, 
which, in their general scope, coincided with the recommenda- 
tions of the Council. 
The Council regret that up to the present time they have had 
no means of obtaining any information as to the effect of the 
Orders of Privy Council in checking the progress of disease, 
and they have therefore resolved to make application to the 
Chairman of Quarter Sessions in each county, to furnish from 
time to time, any information in their power from the reports 
