The use of the animal as a means of evaluating pasture is an obvious approach to the problem, since this is the form in which the practical man will ultimately measure the return from his grassland. If anything has to be sacrificed it is the sward and not the animal, a point too often overlooked in our grassland work generally. Though many grazing trials of an observational nature are to be found in the early agricultural literature, the earliest experimental work was most probably that of the late Sir William Somerville. When Professor of Agriculture at Newcastle in 1897, he commenced the world-famous experiment at Cockle Park Agricultural Experimental Station on pasture improvement. An effort was then made to measure the effect of various systems of manuring in terms of the live-weight increase of sheep grazing on the different plots. In this experiment on Tree Field the relative values of the different systems of manuring were measured by weighing the sheep before and after the experimental period. In the early years the plots were stocked with hoggs, but in order to get closer grazing lambs and ewes are now used and have shown greater increases per acre.

In a paper of this kind it would be very easy to be over ambitious and therefore be tempted to go too far in an effort to establish relationships between the physical and the other factors which have influenced the livestock policy of this region. Apart from the complexities of these relationships which make it difficult to determine their influence, there is generally a large gap in our knowledge of the physical data relating to livestock farming. For example it is only fairly recently that we have come to realise the subtle influence that certain “trace elements” have on the health of ruminant livestock, and also the marked differences that exist in the feeding value of grass of varied species according to the type of farming practised.

The intricate pattern of distribution of the Devon breeds of sheep can be broadly related to variations in natural conditions. Some ebb and flow in the popularity of breeds is to be expected as a result of changing economic circumstances. Pre-war, there was wide scale crossing with the Dorset Down and South Down rams to obtain earlier maturity. Since the war, the ploughing-out and the new marketing arrangements for fat-stock have brought a revival of interest in the pure-breeds, but as in other parts of Britain, the change over to dairying, especially in West and Mid-Devon, has been accompanied by a permanent reduction in sheep flocks.

When your Secretary wrote inviting me to take part in a discussion on “ Animals and Grass,” I agreed with alacrity on account of the very keen fascination which the subject has for me. Since then, in trying to compose this paper, I realise how rash I was, and how unsuited, even after nearly twenty years’ farming, to make a useful contribution to this discussion. Because I do wish it to be clear to everyone that I, personally, have not made a success of grass farming, and therefore this paper is really an apology, or, if you will, an attempt to justify negligence, in which, I believe, I am not alone.

The first ten years of my farming life were spent on a marginal land farm, rising from eight hundred feet, and for the last ten it has been my privilege to farm what I consider to be one of the finest arable farms in Scotland. For that reason, I do feel that I have a certain claim to talk to you here to-day even if only with failures to illustrate my point.

In the decade up to the outbreak of World War II. in 1939, the counties of Devon and Cornwall accounted for nearly 10% of the pig population of England and Wales. It is an exporting area for all classes of livestock, but the preponderance of exports over home consumption is indicated in pigs more than any other class of livestock as the figures in Table I., based on information obtained in a survey into the movements and slaughtering of livestock in 1930, show.*