Ixxxvi 
Monthly Council, July 27, 1892. 
to do so should write articles upon 
them for the Journal. 
Mr. Terry said that, having been 
lately engaged as a Judge of farms, 
he had found that, in the opinion of 
the farmers whom he had met, the 
competitions did great good in the 
districts in which they were held. 
He quoted the opinion of Mr. John 
Treadwell, who had entered his farm 
for competition on several occasions, 
and who had expressed to him how 
much he owed of his success in farm- 
ing to these competitions. They were 
now going into an enterprising dis- 
trict, and he hoped the Council would 
see their way to continue the farm 
prizes for next year. 
Mr. Walter Gilbby suggested that 
some system should he adopted 
similar to what was done by the 
Minister of Agriculture in France, 
and that the Society should give a 
gold medal — or some other distinction 
of the kind, which might be handed 
down by the receiver — to the farmers 
whose farms were selected for de- 
s ;ription in the Journal. 
The Hon. Cecil Parker pointed 
out that if Mr. Gilbey’s suggestion 
were adopted it would place the 
Local Committee in a very invidious 
position. The Committee would not 
care to select farms in the way pro- 
posed, knowing that one of them was 
to have a gold medal. 
The Chairman thought it would 
have been more satisfactory if they 
could have known what would be the 
expense of the alternative plan of 
appointing a Commissioner or Com- 
missioners to visit typical farms in 
the district. 
Mr. Garrett Taylor said that 
although he supported the idea of 
visits by Special Commissioners in the 
first instance, he did not anticipate 
that prizes or distinctions would be 
eliminated altogether. He moved 
that the prizes for farms be continued 
for another year, with a new system 
of judging. They might make the 
awards in one visit, which would 
reduce the expense immensely. They 
would then have an opportunity of 
seeing how the new system worked, 
before definitely committing them- 
selves to the policy of having no farm 
competitions at all. 
Mr. Mainwabing felt bound to 
say, from his own observation, that 
the prizes were not at all expected, 
and the general opinion was that the 
expense of the judging of these farm 
competitions was out of all proportion 
to the value of them. 
Mr. Taylor’s amendment was 
seconded by Lord Egerton of 
Tatton, and, at his suggestion, it 
was altered so as to read as fol- 
lows : — 
That the farm prizes be con- 
tinued for another year, with such 
modifications in the method of 
judging as may be recommended 
by the Journal Committee. 
On a show of hands, the amend- 
ment was declared lost by six votes 
to eighteen. The report of the 
Journal Committee was then adopted. 
Chemical. 
Viscount Emlyn (Chairman) re- 
ported that Dr. Voelcker had attended 
before the Departmental Committee 
on the adulteration of fertilisers and 
feeding-stuffs, and had handed in the 
memorandum of the Chemical Com- 
mittee on the subject. The suggestions 
made at the general meeting held on 
June 22 in the Showyard at Warwick 
had been considered, and the Com- 
mittee recommended that the answers 
be as follows : — 
(a) Mr. Philip Saltmarshe : 
“ That the Society’s charge for analy- 
sis of feeding-stuffs should he reduced 
from 10s. to 6s.” 
This question, among others, was 
very carefully considered in 1888 by 
Sir John Thorold’s Committee, and 
after reviewing the statistics of recent 
years, the Council see no reason for 
coming to a contrary conclusion to 
that arrived at in 1888, viz., “That 
the fees for analyses should not be 
reduced.” The experience of the 
Chemical Committee has been, that 
although reductions in the fees for 
certain analyses have been made from 
time to time, this action has not been 
accompanied by any proportionate 
increase in the number of samples of 
that class sent for examination. In 
feeding-stuffs a reduction of the fee 
for a partial analysis was made some 
time ago, and as low a charge as 
2s. 6d. per sample was fixed ; but the 
