M.— AGRICULTURE 255 



for the type of sheep we have developed. We have no long periods of 

 drought, and, with good management, a generous food supply can be 

 provided all the year round. It is largely because of this that we have 

 in the past been able to do so much in the way of developing our various 

 breeds of live stock. Attempts to standardise our stock too strictly would 

 largely preclude advance in the future and nullify the suitability of our 

 conditions for stock improvement. We have not yet reached finality in 

 any direction. 



Present conditions and market demands seem likely to lead to the dis- 

 appearance of some of our breeds, but I hope that before the process goes 

 very far, a detailed survey will be made of the relationship between the 

 various breeds and the conditions to which each appears to be particularly 

 suited, in the hope that thereby the peculiarities of the breeds may be 

 tested and utilised in other parts of the world. We do not at present 

 require their large size and fat meat, but it is possible that each possesses 

 some special characters which we are not yet able to appreciate properly, 

 but which may be of immense value elsewhere, even if they are no longer 

 specially important in this country. It is pleasing to know that Nichols 

 has already started such an investigation. 



Disease. 



It would be impossible for me to close my address without some 

 reference to the importance of sheep diseases. In a detailed history of 

 British agriculture, among the dates which would stand out most clearly 

 would be the many years in which disastrous losses of sheep from disease 

 have occurred, but I suspect that at all times what has been regarded as 

 more or less normal loss has been even more important than the exceptional 

 losses experienced periodically. In early days there is no doubt that this 

 annual loss was extremely heavy. For instance, Thorold Rogers quotes 

 records of about the end of the thirteenth century which show that on 

 eight sheep-breeding estates with an average of 1,133 sheep, the average 

 loss was 221, or close upon 20 per cent. He also points out that in the 

 early days of the landlord and tenant system, the owner of the land 

 insured the tenant against extraordinary losses of stock, particularly sheep. 



From the earliest days of sheep farming in this country, liver fluke has 

 been much the most important single cause of loss. I have already 

 alluded to the fact that in 1879-81 it accounted for three or four million 

 sheep, or 10 per cent, to 15 per cent, of our total population at the time. 

 More recently, 1920-21, 1924-25, 1931-32 have all been periods of great 

 loss, though more localised than the 1879-81 epidemic. Few things give 

 me greater satisfaction than the reflection that it is largely due to the work 

 at Bangor of my colleagues, Montgomerie and Walton, who followed up 

 the researches of many workers, that this trouble, which has caused such 

 untold losses to British agriculture for centuries, may now be combated 

 with a good chance of success. Various workers have devised methods 

 of control for the most important of the other parasites which infest our 

 flocks, but there is still great need for much more research both on these 

 and on the more obscure sheep diseases which, until quite recently, have 

 received very little attention from veterinary workers. 



