234 Annual Report on Adulterations, §'c. 
it, whether as exhibitors or merely visitors. The benefit, too, 
to the country in Avhose interests it was mainly undertaken, cannot 
well be overrated. The numbers who came from distant parts 
to see it, in spite of the unfavourable, nay inclement, weather 
during the entire period of the Show, testify to the interest it 
excited, and to the sound judgment and discrimination of the 
Executive Committee, who had recognised and supplied a re- 
quirement of German agriculture. 
Under even the unfavourable circumstances of a first attempt, 
of bad weather, and of the unforeseen and lamentable loss Avhich 
the Committee sustained on the very eve of the Meeting by the 
death of its President,"* its success was beyond all expectation. 
Let us hope, in the interest of agriculture generally, that a fes- 
tival which has been so successfully inaugurated may be perpe- 
tuated — that we may at no very distant day be again invited to 
take part in another International gathering on the same ground ; 
when I feel certain that the good results of the last will secure 
even a greater proportion of exhibitors from Great Britain than 
were then present, creditable though that proportion was. 
Iohn Wilson. 
IX. — PROFESSOR Toelcker's Annual Report. 1. Adulteration 
of Oilcake ; 2. Of Artificial Manures ; 3. Analysis of Egyptian 
Guano; 4. Of Nile-icater ; 5. Causes of Barrenness in Soils; 
6. Subjects recently under Investigation. 
In my last annual Report I directed attention to the enormous 
extent to which oilcakes, professedly sold as genuine, were 
mixed with cheap refuse feeding-materials, or with more or less 
unwholesome foreign impurities, imported with the seed from 
which such cakes were made. 
1. At the request of the Council I delivered a lecture before 
the Society on the subject of cake adulteration, which appears 
to have attracted considerable attention in the agricultural and 
commercial community, and I have now the satisfaction to report 
that a great improvement has taken place in the manufacture of 
oilcakes. Amongst the samples sent for examination during the 
past season, comparatively speaking, few were found to be grossly 
adulterated or absolutely injurious to cattle, and a large propor- 
tion were what they professed to be, pure genuine linseed-cakes 
* On the death of Baron Ernst Merck the Presidency of the Executive Com- 
mittee devolved upon Mr. Aug. Jos. Schon, under whose able management, aided 
by the personal exertions of his colleagues, the Meeting was conducted to such a 
successful termination. To this gentleman I am indebted for the statistical details 
given in this Report. 
