( cxcv ) 
II>roceebmo$ at IbalHearIp (Seneral Meeting 
of (Sovernors ant) Members, 
HELD AT THE SOCIETY’S HOUSE, 12 HANOVER SQUARE. 
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 7, 1893, 
THE DUKE OF DEVONSHIRE, K.G. (PRESIDENT), IN THE CHAIR. 
Present: — 
Members of Council . — The Earl of 
Ravensworth, Lord Brougham and 
Vaux, Lord Moreton, Sir Jacob 
Wilson, Messrs. John H. Arkwright, 
Alfred Ashworth, H. Chandos-Pole- 
Gell, Charles Clay, Lieut.-Col. Curtis- 
Hayward, Messrs. J. Marshall Dug- 
dale, S. P. Foster, Hugh Gorringe, 
Anthony Hamond, C. S. Mainwaring, 
A. J. Smith, Henry Smith, Martin J. 
Sutton, E. V. V. Wheeler, Charles 
■Whitehead, and C. W. Wilson. 
Members . — Sir John Kennaway, 
Bart., M.P., Professor Brown, C.B., 
Messrs. Stephen F. Castle, Horace F. 
Cox, W. Everitt, H. J. Greenwood, 
Surgeon Lieut.- Colonel Ince, M.D., 
Messrs. Frederick King, J. Kers- 
ley Fowler, B. F. Posford, Edmond 
Riley, Thomas Stirton, J. Herbert 
Taylor, John ThorntoD, John Wright- 
son, and G. D. Yeoman. 
Officers. — Mr. Ernest Clarke, Secre- 
tary ; Dr. J. Augustus Voelcker, Con- 
sulting Chemist. 
President’s Address. 
The President, in opening the 
proceedings, said that as this was 
the first occasion on which he had 
occupied the Presidential chair at 
a general meeting of Governors 
and Members of the Society, he 
desired to take the opportunity of re- 
peating the thanks, expressed by him 
at the meeting held in the Chester 
Showyard last June, for the honour 
which they had conferred upon him 
in electing him the President of that 
distinguished and important body. 
His personal relations with the So- 
ciety had unfortunately not been of 
very long duration, nor of a very close 
and intimate character ; but as the 
successor of his father, who became 
a Governor of the Society three days 
after its formation, in 1838, he might 
at all events claim some association 
with its work from the very com- 
mencement of its history. (Hear, 
hear.) The members had been asked 
to meet at 12 Hanover Square that 
day, because it was probably the last 
occasion on which a general meeting 
of the Society would be held within 
the walls of its old home — a home in 
which, during the period of over 
half a century, it had, he hoped, done 
good service to agriculture, but which 
had now become too small for its 
comprehensive and ever-increasing 
operations. It so happened that bis 
father was President just about 
the middle of the Society’s occupancy 
of its present house, namely, in 1869- 
1870, and they would perhaps allow 
him to give a few comparative figures 
of that time and the present, as 
illustiating the progress which the 
Society had since made. 
At a meeting held in that room on 
December 8, 1869, when his father 
was in the chair, it was announced 
that there had been an increase of 
membership during the past year, and 
that there was then a total of 5,697 
members. To-day he had the 
pleasure to announce that the total 
number of members of the Society 
was 11,219, or more than double. 
n 2 
