Dr W J A Payne: an appreciation

Abstract

I first became aware of W J A Payne in the early 1960s, recently arrived in Tanganyika [now Tanzania] to work on what remained of the infamous (and since almost completely misunderstood) Groundnut Scheme. The groundnuts had failed and most farms were being converted to cattle ranches. I was given the job effecting this conversion at the Nachingwea farms in the Southern Province. To assist me in this task the company provided a First Edition copy of “Williamson and Payne”. “An Introduction to Animal Husbandry in the Tropics” was first published, 435 pages in length, in 1959 and was very quickly reprinted in 1960, then in 1963 and again in 1964. Already a seminal work, a Second Edition of 447 pages was published in 1965. I very quickly got my employers in Dar es Salaam to invest 65 shillings (then £3 and 5 shillings or now £3.50p) in this new work. To my subsequent and no doubt eternal regret I binned the First Edition. I have been unable to ascertain how many reprints of the Second Edition there were but a Third Edition published in 1978 was reprinted at least three times up to 1987. The book was now 755 pages in length and the price in the UK was the enormous sum of £38. A Fourth Edition of 881 pages with Bill Payne as the sole author was published 1990 and again the number of reprints is unknown. These four editions were published by Longman but during the 1990s they divested their agricultural interests to Blackwell-Wiley. The latter almost immediately commissioned a Fifth Edition – but in many respects a new book – which was published in 1999 with Payne and Wilson as authors. The Fifth Edition was only 815 pages long but was in a larger format and so contained much more information and has been described as “still the most authoritative and comprehensive book on the development and production of domestic livestock in the tropics”. A Spanish translation with the title “La ganaderia en regiones tropicales” was published by Ed. Blume SA in 1975. In addition to the commercial editions the Educational Low-Priced Books Scheme published the First Edition in 1965, the Second Edition and three reprints between 1968 and 1975, the Third Edition and five reprints between 1978 and 1989 and the Fourth Edition at least two reprints between 1990 and 1994. More than one hundred thousand copies of the “Introduction” have been sold throughout the world. Citations of these works number many hundreds of thousands. Regrettably, at a cover price of £117, the Fifth substantive edition has proved beyond the reach of many private individuals and indeed many institutional buyers. This has not prevented scientists from continuing to cite earlier editions in their own publications. Attempts by authors and publishers of many other countries and nationalities have singularly failed to dent the preTrop Anim Health Prod (2009) 41:995–998 DOI 10.1007/s11250-008-9273-8