734 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION M. 
the grain the opposite tendencies to those mentioned above, except on the poorer 
soils and drier localities. The average variation in the grain of over sixty-three 
varieties grown annually from 1909 to 1911, under the less extreme climatic con- 
ditions prevailing at the experiment station, was in comparison small. The 
unusually warm summer of 1911, however, gave a slightly larger kernel with a 
thinner husk, slightly poorer in oil and richer in nitrogen than the grain of 1909- 
10, and would resemble the effect of the normal English summer. Time of sowing 
and ordinary dressings of manures produce little effect on the grain. Soils rich in 
nitrogen produce grain richer in this element. 
Foreign and Colonial oats are usually, but not invariably, small, thick husked, 
relatively rich in oil and nitrogen, and low weight per bushel; as a rule they 
have a short maturation period. 
Oil and Nitrogen.—Micro-chemical tests show the oil to be located in the 
aleurone layer and the embryo. The latter forms from 2°5 to 4 per cent. of the 
kernel, and contains between 11°25 per cent. and 12°25 per cent. of the oil, and 
between 4°5 per cent. and 6°5 per cent. of the protein of the whole kernel. The 
smaller grains of the same variety are invariably richer in oil but slightly poorer 
in nitrogen. Analyses made every three days during the formation and matura- 
tion of the grain show the oil to increase rapidly in the first half, then remain 
stationary, whilst the nitrogen increases all through the period. The results seem 
to show that the variation of the principal constituents of the oat kernel is greater 
than is usually supposed. 
Flavour in oatmeal in reiation to chemical composition, milling capacity, and 
yield per acre was dealt with. 
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 6. 
The following Papers were read :— 
1. The Sources of the Nation’s Food Supply. By R. H. Rew, C.B. 
2. Scottish Agricultural Changes. By Major P. G. Cratare, C.B. 
As a sphere of agricultural production Scotland offers a territory of 19,000,000 
acres, of which fully 14 per cent. lies over the 1,500 feet limit, and nearly one- 
half is made up of rough hill-grazings rising in part over that level. This leaves 
for permanent cultivated pasture for rotation grasses and clovers, and for the 
surface over which the plough can annually range, not quite 5,000,000 acres. 
The ‘ cultivated area’ can be shown to have lost and gained in the interval if the 
statistics of the Highland and Agricultural Society in 1854-56 be taken as the 
starting point. 
Adding their estimate of 238,000 acres of arable land on the minor farms, 
42,000 in number, to their more detailed analysis of the surface farmed by 43,000 
larger occupiers, we find 3,750,000 acres was then regarded as ‘arable.’ The 
advent of the Agricultural Returns of 1886 suggest as the feature of the inter- 
vening decade a large and rapid shrinkage of the arable acreage. Taking a five- 
year average up to 1870, only 3,360,000 acres could be so regarded. This figure 
rose to 3,367,000 acres in 1886-90 and did not fall below 3,500,000 acres till the 
twentieth century opened. It was 3,460,000 acres in 1901-05 and just under 
3,400,000 in 1906-10, and therefore at the date of the new Census of Production. 
The changes between 1854-56 and 1866-70 included a diminution of 386,000 acres 
coincident with the abandonment of over 150,000 acres of wheat after the abnor- 
mally high prices of the Crimean War disappeared. The later changes, which we 
can measure more exactly from 1870 to 1910, show that some 200,000 acres of 
grain were lost, including 74,000 further acres of wheat; there were nearly 
100,000 acres of turnips and potatoes less, balanced by a growth of nearly 
200,000 acres of rotation grasses. The permanent but cultivated grass in the 
same forty years augmented steadily from a round million to 1,500,000 acres. 
If crop areas are less the yields are all higher, and the wheat crop of the Census 
