Ordinary Meeting, November 14th, 1865. 
R. Angus Smith. Ph.D., F.R.S., &c.. President, in the 
Chair. 
Mr. Charles Bailey, and Mr. Thomas Barker, M.A., Pro- 
fessor of Mathematics, Owens College, were elected Ordinary 
Members of the Society. 
The following extract of a letter from Thomas Ainsworth, 
Esq., of Cleator, near Whitehaven, Corresponding Member 
of the Society, accompanying a copy of his meteorological 
observations for October, was read by Mr. Baxendell : 
The great peculiarity of the season has been the very heavy 
dews we have had — great luxuriance of pasture nourished by 
dews and not by rain. I have drawn Professor Simmond’s 
attention to this as being a predisposing cause of the present 
cattle disease. Not that it really engenders the malady, but 
predisposes the animal to take this peculiar type of disease — 
my own experience from the readings of my instruments 
some twelve or fourteen years ago having shown that disease 
of the same type attacked my cattle and destroyed them, and 
each time when the high temperature of the day and the low 
temperature of night gave us such heavy dews as to render 
the herbage quite indigestible. 
Mr. Baxendell considered it very probable that cattle 
would be injuriously affected by feeding on herbage which 
had not been well washed by occasional showers of rain. 
Dew had little or no washing effect, and it could not remove 
Proceedings— Lit. & Phil. Society.— Yol. Y— No. 4— Session 1865-6. 
