730 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION M. 
industrial army which the genius of Arkwright, Watt, and other inventors pro- 
vided with employment there was raised an ever-increasing food-supply. 
Political and industrial development alike depended on the rate of imcrease of 
the population, and this again on the rate at which the means of subsistence could 
be raised from British soil. 
Although the economic position has undergone a revolution there is still work 
for the Improver; no longer indeed do our industrial classes depend for sub- 
sistence on the surplus products of the British farmer, but after a long period 
of forgetfulness, once again it has been recognised that a progressive agriculture 
is essential to the well-being of the nation. This is not the time to discuss the 
nature of the questions which press upon us to-day; but let us not forget that 
they are our questions. To this newly formed Section of the British Association 
has descended the task of the early associations; it is the privilege of its mem- 
bers to preserve, and to hand down to their successors, that Spirit of the 
Improver which animated alike the ancient writers of Greece and Rome and the 
British societies of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; and to-day we may 
take to ourselves the exhortation of Walter Blith, for his words apply to 
Section M as they did to its predecessors, ‘from you, too, I expect and waite 
for more discoveries of some thing, I scarce know what to name it, which lies yet 
in obscurity, but I will call it the Improvement of the Improver.’ 
The following Papers were then read :— 
1. Some Important Chemical and Bacteriological Problems in relation 
to Agriculture. By Professor F. Léunis. 
2. The Interpretation of Milk Records. By W. Gavin, B.A. 
The practice of keeping milk records seems at last to be gaining ground 
throughout the country, and in a few years’ time a very considerable amount of 
material will have accumulated for the study of the dairy cow. The author, 
working on the records kept for the last twenty-four years on Lord Rayleigh’s 
dairy-farms, has endeavoured to deal with the preliminary difficulties that will 
arise in the interpretation of these records. 
In any statistical study of the inheritance of milk-yield, or indeed in any 
systematised breeding where more than a few cows are dealt with, it becomes 
necessary to define a cow’s milking capability by a single and unqualified figure. 
By milking capability is meant, of course, the cow’s individual somatic power of 
giving milk. No reference is intended to her genetic qualifications in this respect. 
Breeders generally rely on such figures as total yield per calf, total yield per 
calendar year, average per week, &c., but the enormous fluctuations found in the 
same animal show that all these are subject to a variety of outside influences. 
It is therefore necessary :— 
(a) To select a figure affected by the minimum number of these influences, 
and 
(4) To estimate as accurately as is possible the effect of those influences 
under which it does fall. 
After preliminary examination of the material, it was decided to see which of 
the following figures would give the most satisfactory hasis of comparison, 
namely :— 
Maximum yield per day. 
Average yield per day, fifth to twelfth week after calving. 
Maximum yield: per day maintained or exceeded for not less than three 
weeks (i.e., three weekly entries). 
