For this event great preparations were made. £16,000 was spent in laying out splendid grounds and making suitable erections for the occasion. Committees were appointed in every nation in Europe, and exhibitions invited. Our own Queen gave a Silver Cup to be competed for by Grape-growers. The terms on which this was to be done were forwarded to us, along with others - i.e., three bunches of distinct sorts of Grapes. I entered for this cup, and got a certificate that I had entered properly, and sent, the Grapes accordingly, with what result the following letter, which I addressed to the Council, will show; my reason for thus making the matter so public being to guard others from becoming the dupes of such perfidy in the future. The sole object of the change from three bunches to a collection was the determination to award the Cup if possible to one of their own countrymen, entirely irrespective of merit; but Mr Meredith was able so to shift his ground - having a great many grapes with him - as to make such a deed too glaringly ridiculous, and got the Cup, which, as the only individual who complied strictly with their printed rules, ought to have been awarded to me, as is pretty clearly indicated by the following extract from the leader on the subject in 'The Chronicle:' "There was an unfortunate misunderstanding about the terms for the Queen's Cup, as it was supposed it was to be given to the best specimens of Grapes "(it was no supposition at all, it was clearly in their schedule and advertised in ' The Chronicle ' - in the one as three bunches, in the other as three bunches distinct sorts); "but the terms were altered at the last moment to ' an assortment.' There was nothing, however, to come the least near the British Grapes with which Mr Meredith won the Cup, though in all probability Mr Thomson would have been successful had not the terms been altered.

His three bunches were quite wonderful, and excited immense interest".