Board Of Agriculture Research Articles

Sir Thomas Middleton, K.C.I.E., F.R.S

THE Committee of the Privy Council for the Organization and Development of Agricultural Research, after consultation with the members of the Agricultural Research Council and the president of the Royal Society, has appointed Sir Thomas H. Middleton to be chairman of the Agricultural Research Council as from July 1. On that date the Right Hon. Lord Richard Cavendish, who has been chairman of the Council since its inception in June 1931, retires from membership of the Council. Sir Thomas Middleton, who is vice-chairman of the Development Commission, an office which he has held since 1929, has been a member of the Agricultural Research Council since its establishment. He is chairman of one Standing Committee of the Council on Soils and Plant Nutrition and of the Committee on the Estimates of Research Institutions. Sir Thomas has been successively professor of agriculture in Baroda College, India, lecturer in agriculture in the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, professor of agriculture in Durham College of Science, and professor of agriculture at Cambridge. In 1906 he joined the staff of the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries as assistant secretary, and in 1917–19 was deputy director-general of the Food Production Department. He was a member of the Royal Commission on Agriculture in India, which sat in 1926–28. He was the first recipient of the Gold Medal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, awarded for services to agriculture.

Land Utilization in England at the End of the Eighteenth Century

IT is a matter of both practical and educational interest to discover what possibilities exist for comparison between present and past uses of land in England. Of present utilization, thanks to work of Land Utilization Survey of Great Britain, we can and shall learn much. But how far is it possible to reveal past conditions of land use? Hitherto attention has been drawn to two past periods' for which data are available, namely, later Middle Ages, for which Domesday Book is chief source, and mid-nineteenth century, for which tithe maps of parishes afford valuable and detailed material. It is object of this paper to suggest that it is possible also to reconstruct, in sure outline if not in precise detail, differential uses of land in England towards close of eighteenth century. This work is possible because literary and cartographical materials then available are more abundant and more fruitful than for earlier periods; further, it may well prove suggestive as a basis for comparison, since advances in agricultural organization and technique made English farming at that time both enlightened and prosperous. Amongst relevant literary material for latter half of eighteenth century, apart from works of topographers who tended to copy from each other,2 there are able studies of rural economy, written by William Marshall, and numerous volumes written or edited by Arthur Young. (These latter writers, in contrast to topographers, were something like field geographers, and wrote from direct observation.) In addition, there are a number of county maps, drawn on scales between 212 inches and i inch to mile, most remarkable and valuable of which are surveys of John Roque.3 Finally, most important material of all, which has not received from geographers attention it deserves, consists of survey of British agriculture which was carried out, county by county, from 1794 onwards. This survey was sponsored by Board of Agriculture and Internal Improvement, which was established in I793 under presidency of Sir John Sinclair and with Arthur Young as secretary.4 The object of survey, according to Sir John Sinclair, was to discover the cultivation of surface (sc. of land), and resources to be derived from it. The county reports are not, it is true, equal in quality or content. Some were based on

A Variability Series of Isocrymal Maps of Nebraska

IN those parts of the world where frost and the length of growing season are limiting factors in crop production a knowledge of probabilities relative to the last killing frost of spring and the first killing frost of autumn is highly desirable. The safest criterion to follow in such areas is the detailed record of what has actually occurred. Several series of isocrymal (equal-frost) maps for Nebraska showing the mean dates of the last killing frost of spring and the first killing frost of autumn have been constructed by the United States Weather Bureau at Lincoln. The earliest of these appeared in the Annual Report of the State Board of Agriculture in I909. At that time the average length of frost records for the weather stations of Nebraska was only I years; hence the maps were little better than rough approximations. In making a new series of isocrymal maps the present investigator considered it more desirable to use the median and percentile dates rather than dates calculated from means and standard deviations. Not only is the former method easier to manipulate, but the resulting maps more nearly approximate what has actually occurred.'

Report of Subcommittee A on Recommendations of Referees

Journal Article Report of Subcommittee A on Recommendations of Referees Get access H H Hanson, H H Hanson Chairman State Board of Agriculture, Dover, Delaware Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar H R Kraybill, H R Kraybill Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar G L Bidwell G L Bidwell Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Association of Official Agricultural Chemists, Volume 18, Issue 1, 15 February 1935, Pages 45a–51, https://doi.org/10.1093/jaoac/18.1.45a Published: 18 February 2020

Sir Robert Greig

SIR ROBERT GREIG, Secretary of the Department of Agriculture for Scotland, is about to retire from that position, as he attains his sixtieth year on March 23. He has only held the post for about five years, but that has been long enough for him to prove himself an excellent chief who has backed all scientific development in his Department. After lea ving the University of Edinburgh, Sir Robert was for a time a ranch manager in north-west Canada. After returning to England he was for two years lecturer at the Cheshire Agricultural College, passing on for four years to the Durham College of Science. In 1903-10 he was the Fordyce lecturer in agriculture at the University of Aberdeen. In 1911 he returned south to become staff inspector in agriculture at the Board of Education, but not for long, for in the same year he became a commissioner at the Board of Agriculture, Scotland, of which body he was chairman in 1921?28. The combination of technical knowledge and administrative ability exemplified by Sir Robert goes far to explain his success; and general regret is expressed at his impending retirement.

Sir Thomas Middleton, K.C.L.E., K.B.E., C.B

THE first award of the Gold Medal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England in recognition of distinguished service for agriculture has been made to Sir Thomas Middleton, vice-chairman of the Development Commission. In the early part of his career Sir Thomas was closely associated with farmers in England. Under his guidance a wide and varied scheme of experiments was conducted in the northern counties in the first years of the present century and afterwards in the eastern counties. He was for a time lecturer in agriculture at Aberystwyth, and later professor at Durham, and finally at Cambridge, where his five year's professorship served to put the young department on its feet with funds for a headquarters assured. In 1906 he went from Cambridge to the Board of Agriculture. The War provided much scope for his talents as an administrator. In 1916 he produced his well-known survey of German agriculture and indicated the lines which British farmers might usefully follow to meet the national emergency. When the Food Production Department was set up, he was put in charge of it, and the success it achieved was largely due to his wise guidance and tactful management. A record of the work accomplished and its post-War lessons is to be found in his book “Food Production in War”. In 1919 Sir Thomas was appointed to the Development Commission, becoming vice-chairman ten years later. Much of the success of the present system of agricultural education and research is due to him. He was one of the earliest members of the Agricultural Education Association, and was the first president of the newly constituted Section M (Agriculture) of the British Association at the Dundee meeting in 1912. His presidential address at the meeting was “Early Associations for promoting Agriculture and Improving the Improver”. The work of a great ‘improver’ has been suitably recognised.

A FIFTY-YEARS RETROSPECT

In 1911 Lord Carrington, then President of the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries, offered me the appointment of Director-General of the Ordnance Survey of the (then) United Kingdom, and I need not say that I accepted the appointment. I took over from my predecessor, Colonel S. C. N. Grant, on the 22nd August. The Ordnance Survey was a single department charged with the mapping, on a great variety of scales, of England and Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. Officers and men were freely interchangeable between the different countries.

British Food Journal Volume 34 Issue 7 1932

There has reached us during the last few days an account of certain “Notices of Judgment” under Section 4 of the Food and Drugs Act. This has been issued by the United States Board of Agriculture, the Federal Department concerned with the examination of foods and drugs which have been consigned from one State of the Union to another. These form, under the circumstances, an item in inter‐State commerce and the Federal, as distinct from the State authorities, are responsible for seeing that such foods and drugs have been made in conformity with the law and that they are not “misbranded,” that is to say, that no description which may be in any sense misleading to the purchaser appears on the label or on circular letters sent with the package. The judgments in question relate to drugs and to proprietary medicines. The drugs mentioned such as ether, ergot, lime water and so forth, are in some cases not up to standard. The separate States of the Union have their own troubles with regard to so‐called remedies, but these relate to State and not to Inter‐State commerce.

British Food Journal Volume 33 Issue 4 1931

In a previous article we had occasion to refer to and to condemn the standards for jams, jellies and marmalade which had been arrived at as the result of a conference which had taken place during the year 1930 between the Jam Panel of the Food Manufacturers' Federation and certain members of the Society of Public Analysts and other Analytical Chemists. There is another point in connection with these standards which we think might have received the attention of this Conference. At the present time everyone is being exhorted to buy British goods on the grounds, it may be supposed, that such purchases are patriotic in character and good for trade. But to speak quite frankly, if these jams are to be taken as a fair example of British skill and enterprise, the legend “Buy British” leaves us cold. What, then, is a British jam? Is there such a thing? If by the term we mean a jam made of sound British grown fruit which gives the name to the jam mixed with an equal weight of sugar, it would seem to be a rarity. Some fruits we cannot grow. Hence Scotch marmalade is a fair enough term to use, assuming of course that the orange is of the right sort and in the right quantity. The same thing applies of course to apricot jam. The greater number of our best known jams are made from fruit that, whatever may be its origin, can be grown here and grown better here than elsewhere— strawberry, raspberry, plum, gooseberry. We say unhesitatingly that there is no need under any circumstances to buy the pulp of these fruits or the fruits themselves abroad when it is of immediate interest to the health and pocket of the consumer, the prosperity of the home fruit grower and ultimately to the trade itself to buy them at home. In a report issued in 1927 on Fruit Marketing in England and Wales issued by the Board of Agriculture it is stated that the manufacture of jam is the “backbone” of the fruit‐growing industry. It is further stated that 90 per cent. of the home grown raspberry crop, 60 per cent. of the strawberry and 40 per cent. of the plum are or were at that time purchased by the manufacturers of jam. We say “at that time” because the figures in all probability relate to the conditions in force up to 1926, and that year it seems began to mark an increase in the amount of fruit pulp imported from foreign countries. The fact that pulp was being imported in large amount previous to that year is noted in the report whose title is given above, 90 per cent. of the home grown raspberry crop available for the manufacture of jam is used, but what is to be thought of the figure given for plums? In connection with this we need only quote the remarks of Lieut.‐Col. Ruggles Brise which he made during the debate in the House of Commons on the terms of the Resolution.

British Food Journal Volume 32 Issue 8 1930

British Food Journal Volume 32 Issue 8 1930

How the Plant Division, Missouri State Board of Agriculture, Serves the Fruit Grower

Journal Article How the Plant Division, Missouri State Board of Agriculture, Serves the Fruit Grower Get access George D. Jones, George D. Jones Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar B. F. Boillot B. F. Boillot Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar Journal of Economic Entomology, Volume 23, Issue 3, 1 June 1930, Pages 553–555, https://doi.org/10.1093/jee/23.3.553 Published: 01 June 1930

Prof. T. B. Wood, C.B.E., F.R.S

WITH very great regret—a regret which is shared by his hosts of friends—I have read the news of the recent death of Prof. Wood. To the value of his stimulating work in many branches of agricultural science, many competent judges will give, or have already given, their testimony with far greater knowledge than my own. I confine myself here to the personal acknowledgment of the invaluable services which he rendered during the last three years of the War to the nation and to more than one great department of State, and especially to the Board of Agriculture. I feel that I should like to add something, if I can, to the memory of a most loyal colleague.

The Froghopper Problem in Trinidad

THE sugar-cane froghopper, Monecphora (Tomaspis) saccharina Dist., is a serious enemy of the cane growers of Trinidad, and although there are records dating back to 1862, which may possibly refer to this insect, no severe outbreak occurred until 1906. Heavy intermittent attacks have followed ever since, the most disastrous year in this respect being 1917, when about 10,000 tons of sugar were lost through froghopper damage. From 1909 onwards investigations into froghopper eradication were conducted mainly by officers of the Trinidad Board of Agriculture and by certain specialists. Up to the end of 1917 this work was purely of an entomological character, but the studies of Williams and of Nowell showed the need of approaching the problem on a wider basjs. In 1924 a Committee was constituted to inquire further into, and to report upon, the froghopper pest with the view of its control and ultimate eradication. Among other proposals it led in October 1925 to the Governor appointing a Froghopper Investigation General Committee, and the deliberations of this body are published in the form of Minutes and Proceedings at frequent intervals.1 The first meeting of this Committee was held in November 1925, and three subcommittees were appointed to deal respectively with (1) agricultural relations; (2) entomological relations and (3) soil relations. Their personnel included planters, officers of the Department of Agriculture, and members of the staff of the Imperial College of Agriculture. The reports of these subcommittees are considered by a scientific committee which submits recommendations thereon to the general investigation committee alluded to above.

DR. W. G. Smith

SCIENCE has lost a distinguished agricultural botanist in the death of Dr. W. G. Smith, who died in Edinburgh on Dec. 8,1928. Dr. Smith was born in Dundee on Mar. 20, 1866. He graduated in pure science in the University of St. Andrews, and after a short period of teaching in the Morgan Academy, Dundee, became a lecturer in agriculture under the Forfarshire County Council. Later he acted as a demonstrator in botany in the University of Edinburgh under the late Sir Isaac Bayley Balfour. Proceeding to Munich, he took a two years' course of study, gaining there in 1894 his doctorate of philosophy for a thesis entitled “Untersuchung der Morphologie und Anatomie der durch Exoasceen verursachten Sprossund Blatt-Deformationen.” This thesis was afterwards translated into Italian. Another result of his sojourn in Munich was his translation of von Tubeuf's standard work on the “Diseases of Plants by Cryptogamic Parasites,” which appeared in 1897. On his return from Germany, Dr. Smith became lecturer in botany in the University of Leeds, where he remained for “eleven years. In 1908 he was appointed chief of the biology department of the Edinburgh and East of Scotland College of Agriculture. For the last twenty years the College was his headquarters. Recently, under the scheme for the development of research work in agricultural problems, Dr. Smith was appointed advisory officer in agricultural botany to the Board of Agriculture for Scotland.

The Voronoff Operation in Stock-breeding

THE claims made by Dr. Voronoff and others concerning the economic value of his method of reactivation in the field of practical livestock breeding have attracted so much public interest that it was considered desirable that an authoritative report should be prepared for the information of the Ministry of Agriculture and for the Board of Agriculture for Scotland. Delegates from Great Britain, with representatives of several other countries, recently visited Algeria to witness the operation of testis-graf ting in animals of agricultural importance, to examine certain animals which already had been subjected to this technique, and to examine and to report upon the claims that have been made concerning the economic value of its application. Their report has now been issued.1

The maintenance of pure and vigorous stocks of varieties of the potato (Revised Edition, 1927) (Board of Agriculture for Scotland, Edinburgh) price: one shilling

The maintenance of pure and vigorous stocks of varieties of the potato (Revised Edition, 1927) (Board of Agriculture for Scotland, Edinburgh) price: one shilling

Sir James Wilson, K.C.S.I

WE regret to record the death of Sir James Wilson, late of the Indian Civil Service, on Dec. 22 at his residence, Annieslea, Crieff. He was a recognised authority on a variety of topics connected with India —administrative, economic, philological, and ethnographic. After his retirement from the Indian service in 19II, when he settled in London, being keenly interested in agricultural matters, he acted as superintending inspector under the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries, and became a governor of the Agricultural Organisation Society; in 19I4 he was appointed permanent delegate for Great Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa to the. Institute of Agriculture in Rome.

Current Topics and Events

THE Rowett Research Institute, Aberdeen, for the investigation of problems of animal nutrition, has been fortunate in receiving funds from private sources. Two yearsago Mr. W. A. Reid, of Aberdeen, endowed the Library and Statistical Department. The Institute has now received a gift of 10,000l. from Mr. Duthie Webster to support the work of an experimental stock farm. Mr. Webster, who is an Aber-deenshire farmer, is the nephew of the late Mr. William Duthie, of Collynie, who earned world-wide fame as a breeder of beef cattle. The farm is being established in accordance with recommendations made by Prof. T. B. Wood, Director of the Animal Nutrition Institute at Cambridge, and Dr. J. B. Orr, Director of the Rowett Research Institute, in a joint report which, at the request of the Agricultural Council, was drawn up and submitted to the Ministry of Agriculture and the Board of Agriculture for Scotland. One of the sections of that report emphasised the desirability of having in Great Britain one or more experimental stock farms where the results of research work, which appeared of probable economic value, could be tested on a large scale, under practical conditions. In the report it was recommended that such a farm should be established in connexion with the Rowett Research Institute.

Government Publications and their Distribution

WHEN a government takes in its own hands the publication of matters of scientific interest, it may be assumed that this is done with three distinct objects in view. In the first place, it wishes to bring to the notice of scientific workers the results of original researches carried out by experts in Departments under its control, in order that these results may form a foundation for further advance in knowledge. So are published the papers comprised in the excellent scientific reports of the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries in England, and of the Fishery Board for Scotland. Or it desires to bring to the notice of the public, for the sake of the individual and through him of the nation at large, the condensed wisdom of science as bearing upon matters of practical importance. Such is embodied in the pamphlets and leaflets dealing with agricultural pests and plant diseases, with methods of land-cultivation and stock-raising, issued by the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries and the Board of Agriculture for Scotland. Sometimes these two aims are seen to run side by side, as in the Journals of Agriculture published both by the English Ministry and Scottish Board, in which matters of both scientific and practical interest appear.

Wheat offals: their grading, composition and digestibility

In 1913 the National Association of Millers was invited by the Board of Agriculture to formulate a definition of the term “Millers' Offals.” After some discussion the Association forwarded the following resolution: “That millers' offals, or wheaten offals sold as such, are the products of wheat and of the vegetable substances extracted from the wheats of commerce in the process of cleaning; but the proportion of such extraneous matter shall not exceed the percentage found in the wheats imported into the United Kingdom.”