280 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 
Although primarily designed for the case of the fattening animal, 
it has proved practically useful for other classes of stock, and even, 
with slight modification, for the case of the milk-producing animal. 
The last twenty years has also witnessed the great developments of 
protein investigation which have thrown much light upon the problems 
of protein metabolism and the productive efficiency of the proteins of 
different foods. Lastly, we may recall the remarkable developments in 
nutritional science of recent years, consequent upon Hopkins’ discovery 
of the ‘ accessory growth factor,’ and also the attention which is now 
being directed to the importance of the mineral ingredients of foods. 
With all this newer knowledge at his command, the adviser in 
nutrition can now approach his work with far greater confidence, and 
evidence of the increasing practical value of his work is rapidly accumu- 
lating. This is particularly the case with advisory work in milk pro- 
duction, a branch of feeding which lends itself more readily than most 
to carefully regulated rationing owing to the ease with which the 
amount of product can be determined. Few branches of advisory work 
have proved more directly helpful to the farmer in recent years than 
this advisory control of the feeding of dairy cows, the extension of 
which has been greatly aided by the development of milk-recording 
societies, in whose activities such rationing advice is rapidly becoming 
regarded as an indispensable feature. Much success has also been 
met with in advisory work in pig-feeding, and to a less extent in the 
feeding of cattle, the lower degree of success in the latter case being due 
not so much to an inferior capability of the adviser to help as to the 
difficulty of dispelling the tradition that beef production represents the 
supreme accomplishment of the British farmer, as to which there is 
nothing left for him to learn. The work already accomplished repre- 
sents, however, but the very beginnings of economy in the feeding of 
live-stock, and wasteful feeding of both home-grown and purchased 
feeding-stuffs for lack of the necessary advisory guidance is still far too 
widely prevalent. 
Such are only a few of the aspects of advisory work, which, if 
extended more widely, might exercise a very profound effect upon the 
economy of the industry. Such extension implies, however, greatly 
increased resources in men and money and more efficient means of 
bringing the advisory facilities to the notice of the farmer. 
I am inclined, indeed, to think that a more efficient propaganda is 
perhaps the first need of the situation, as one finds in all parts of the 
country an astonishingly large number of farmers who are totally 
unaware of the existence of advisory facilities of any kind. A more 
extensive propaganda will be useless, however, unless accompanied by 
increased provision for advice, since the present resources are already 
more than fully taxed by the relatively moderate volume of calls for 
assistance that now arise. It is the universal complaint of the County 
Agricultural Organisers that they cannot secure the personal contact, 
which it is the most important part of their functions to establish, 
with more than a very small fraction of the farmers within their area, 
and it is for a great extension of this type of advisory assistance that 
there is the most clamant need. Most of our counties have, at present, 
