191 1.] Summary of Agricultural Experiments. 681 



of England for analysis in 19 10, on one of which the Elliot system 

 of laying down grass had been adopted, and on the other an ordinary 

 grass seed mixture had been sown and basic slag had been given 

 in addition. The soil on which Elliot's system had been adopted 

 contained more organic matter, nitrogen, lime, potash, and phosphoric 

 acid than the soil on which the ordinary grass mixture had been 

 sown, so that, presuming the soils to have been originally alike, it 

 would appear that an improvement had been effected under the system 

 of laying down grass advocated by Mr. Elliot. 



Live Stock. 



The Inheritance of MWk Yield in Cattle (Scientific Proc. of the Roy. 

 Dublin Soc, Vol. 13 (N.S.), No. 7, June, 191 1). — Professor James 

 Wilson suggests in this paper, from an examination of milk records, 

 that milk yield is a factor inherited according to Mendel's principles. 

 Danish records, relating to the breed of Red Danish cows, were chiefly 

 considered, as British records have seldom been kept for a long 

 enough period to give information relating to several generations of 

 cows, and American records usually refer to the butter yield, which 

 depends upon both the yield and quality of the milk, factors that are 

 inherited separately. In order to consider the performance of a cow 

 during a lactation period, it was necessary to apply corrections to the 

 record when the lactation period had been prolonged owing to a longer 

 interval than the usual twelve months between two calvings, and also 

 on account of the natural rise in milk yield with the advancing age of 

 the cow. With regard to the latter point, Professor Wilson considers, 

 from an examination of the records of the Irish Department of Agri- 

 culture's farms, that a cow's yield usually increases up to the birth 

 of her fourth or fifth calf, i.e., when she is six or seven years old, and 

 that the total increase from the first to the fourth or fifth calf is 

 on the average about 50 per cent. 



The records of a number of Danish cows and their progeny for 

 several generations are given in the paper, and Professor Wilson 

 concludes from them that improvement in milk yield by breeding is 

 not a slow and gradual process as has formerly been supposed. If a 

 daughter is not on an approximate equality with her dam as a milk 

 producer she is either much higher or much lower. He divides these 

 cows into three grades, and suggests a Mendelian explanation of the 

 differences between mother and daughter, viz., that the extreme grades 

 are the parent strains, and the intermediate, the hybrid. The records 

 that have been obtained of the progeny of a few bulls also lead to the 

 same conclusions. 



Dairying. 



Effect of Cocoa-nut Cake and Linseed Cake on the Composition of 



Butter Fat (Analyst, September, 191 1). — An experiment carried out at 

 the Midland Agricultural College on the feeding of dairy cows with 

 cocoa-nut cake and linseed cake was summarised in this Journal for 

 October, 1911, p. 597. I n this paper Mr. H. T. Cranfield gives the 

 results of the butter tests of the milk of the cows used in the experi- 

 ment. 



Details as to the feeding of the animals will be found as above. 



3 A 



