1. Cows and heifers were injected shortly before slaughter with an extract of horse pituitary or with pregnant mare serum gonadotrophin.

2. These substances were administered at different times of the cycle or in pregnancy; various doses were given simultaneously with removal of the corpus luteum.

3. A series of animals were given 1500 or 5000 i.u. at intervals from 5 days before to 3 days after expression of the corpus luteum; up to thirty ovulations were so obtained.

4. A small number of cows have been treated and left to calve; there have been several twin and triplet births.

1. The colour pattern in the Essex breed shows continuous variation in width and in shape of the belt, in size and number of the distal white points, in pigmentation of the skin and in the occurrence of all-black colour.

2. The variation in ear shape extends from long, hanging ears to small, erect (prick) ears.

3. ‘Rose back’ was observed in a small percentage of pure-bred Essex pigs.

4. Observed results of crossing Wessex with Essex pigs, and the similarity in variation of colour of the two breeds, indicate that the factors upon which the colour depends are the same in Essex and in Wessex, and that there is no genetical difference in colour in these two breeds.

1. An experiment has been conducted with dairy cows to find the effect on milk production of feeding rations with a high dry-matter content—typical war-time rations.

2. It was found that where a ration high in dry matter is fed, the cow tends to refuse food, and a statistically significant fall in milk production results. The correlation between the refusal of food, calculated in terms of starch equivalent, and the fall in milk production was 0·959.

3. The factors causing this inability of the cow to consume sufficient food to meet her total nutrient requirements have been considered. It has been concluded that dry-matter consumption is not an adequate method of expressing the amount of food a cow will consume, and that the major factor influencing food consumption is the palatability of the individual foods making up the ration.

My thanks are due to Dr S. J. Rowland for chemical analysis of the individual foods used in the experiments.

1. A field experiment in which six farms cooperated, supplying fifty-one experimental cows and heifers, has been conducted. The object was to find whether feeding before calving 156 lb. of concentrates or its equivalent in feeding value as bulky food increased milk production.

2. The results showed that animals fed concentrates gained more weight before calving, were in better condition at calving, and produced a maximum of 7 lb. more milk per cow per day than the controls. Although those fed bulky food increased in live weight more than the controls, they did not calve in such good condition and produced only 3 lb. of milk per cow per day more than the controls.

3. Nearly half the animals fed bulky food refused appreciable amounts of this supplement, and it is probable that this refusal of food is one of the factors responsible for the differences in milk production between the two groups receiving additional food.

4. The correlation (r) between the weight of the cow and the weight of the calf was +0·507, and there was no statistically significant difference between the weight of the calves produced by cows receiving different treatments.

5. Although the fat percentage of the milk of the cows receiving supplementary food was higher than that of the cows receiving no supplement, the difference was not statistically significant.

6. Correlation analysis showed that the farmers' judgement of the condition of their cows at calving time was very closely related to the cows' subsequent performance.

The investigations described in this paper are concerned with the influence of the various war-time changes in milling practice on the composition, digestibility and nutritive value, both for ruminants, and pigs, of the wheaten milling offals. The need for obtaining a larger output of flour for human consumption led to the raising of the rate of flour extraction from 70 to 75 % at an early stage of the war, and this was increased further to 85% with the introduction of the ‘national wheat-meal loaf’ in 1942. Two grades of wheaten offals only were marketed at this stage of the war—fine bran and coarse bran. Early in 1943 it became permissible to incorporate a proportion of rye, barley or de-husked oats in the wheat before milling. It was considered unlikely that the inclusion of rye or de-husked oats would exert any adverse influence on the nutritive value of the milling offals. When barley is used to dilute the wheat, however, the husk from this grain finds its way into the offals, and it was therefore to be anticipated that the presence of the barley husk would cause the fibre content of the offals to be raised and their nutritive value to be lowered. Authority has been given for the use of a grist that will give rise to a flour containing up to 10% of barley flour, but at the time of writing it would appear that, in actual practice, flour millers have not exceeded 10% of barley in the grist itself.

An investigation has been made into the effect of time of application of nitrogen as sodium nitrate to the turnip. Experiments were arranged on a statistical basis, and were carried out in sand culture. The life of the turnip up to harvest was arbitrarily divided into three equal light periods, and the fourteen possible combinations of high and low nitrogen applied in these periods constituted the treatments. The absolute amount of growth was largely determined by the level of nitrogen, but the relative proportion of growth was independent of this level. Tops developed earlier than roots, and the effect of difference in nitrogen level was more marked with the roots than the tops. For a high yield of roots it seems desirable to apply nitrogen, early, but for a high yield of tops it would be preferable to apply the nitrogen as post-seedling dressings. The chief effect of level of nitrogen on moisture content was confined to the period in which the harvest took place. A comparison of top/ root ratios also showed that high nitrogen in the early stages of growth stimulated root development.

We thank Mr J. F. N. Leonard for his help during this experiment.