300 



The School of Aoriculture. 



[July, 



in wheat. This discovery demonstrates the practicability of 

 breeding varieties of crops which resist the attacks of diseases, 

 and opens up a wide field of investigation which promises very 

 valuable results. 



The labours of Professor BifTen and his colleagues and of plant 

 breeders generally, will be lightened by the establishment of the 

 National Institute of Agricultural Botany with its headquarters 

 on the Huntingdon Road opposite the University Farm. This 

 Institute manages the national seed testing station, but its main 

 function is to take over, test, grow on, and distribute seed of new 

 and improved varieties of all kinds of agricultural crops, return- 

 ing to the breeder a fair proportion of the profit derived from 

 their sale. 



The Animal Nutrition Institute has investigated and is investi- 

 gating a variety of problems concerned with meat production. 

 Its earliest efforts were directed to the study of the composition 

 and feeding value of home-grown fodders, and members of the 

 staff have published numerous papers on mangolds, straws, and 

 silage, the latter in collaboration with Mr. Amos. Another 

 line of work has been the investigation of winter beef production, 

 which has been attacked both statistically and experimentally. 

 Many papers have been published, but the investigation is still 

 incomplete. 



Dr. Marshall and his colleagues have extended their work on 

 the physiologv of reproduction to many problems of meat pro- 

 duction, for example, seedy cut in bacon, the effect of spaying 

 on rate of growth, the factors controlling the size of the litter 

 in sows. 



Mr. Mackenzie and his colleagues have made a special study 

 of pig feeding under modern conditions, and have demonstrated 

 the importance of vitamines and the value of palm kernel cake 

 in pig feeding. Besides these more immediately practical 

 investigations, several members of the staff have been engaged 

 in the study of fundamental scientific problems of nutrition and 

 have obtained important results. Scientific work of this kind, 

 although its results may have no direct bearing on agricultural 

 practice for perhaps 20 or even 50 years, is none the less impor- 

 tant for the progress of agriculture. Just as present-day farmers 

 and consumers of farm produce are to-day reaping the reward 

 of Lawes' and Gilbert's purely scientific work on manures earned 

 out at Rothamsted more than 50 years ago, so we may confidently 

 expect that farmers and consumers of the future will equally 

 benefit from work now in progress which at first sight may appear 



