Scotland in the past has never been recognised as having an important pig industry. The reason for this, I think,is that in the years before the last war the pig was definitely looked down on by the larger arable farmers, and was considered a dirty and smelly animal to have about the farm. These farmers, therefore, stuck to their fattening cattle and flocks of sheep, although one often heard it said by them that fattening bullocks did not pay, but it was necessary to obtain muck for the arable land.

The Scottish sheep industry is today merely a part of the United Kingdom sheep industry governed centrally through national price control. Nevertheless, Scotland, considered as a geographical unit, does and will remain, and geography has, as I need not remind you here, a great deal to do with any agricultural industry, whether Scottish or otherwise.

That fact is apt to be forgotten where we have—as we have today in the United Kingdom—a planned food policy, implemented by a planned agricultural price policy. Such planning, enforced by price structure, will inevitably change the agricultural face of any country. It has already changed the agricultural face of this country.

The paper by Mr. Smith, in which I have been greatly interested, is nevertheless outside my own particular field of study, which is gynaecology. Only in so far as I have carried out artificial insemination, using donated human semen, have I come in contact with a certain number of males in a somewhat comparable manner. I have also dealt with the seminal analyses of the husbands, because it is my practice to insist that the husbands of all subfertile patients should also be examined.

Opening the discussion on Dr. Walton's paper, Professor Wm. C. Miller (Animal Health Trust) said: “Dr. Walton has presented a paper which outlines the fundamentals of male sex behaviuor and forms an excellent skeletal strcuture into which the minutiae of behaviour can be fitted. I feel I ought to make an effort to fit some of the more precise details into their places and so contribute towards the presentation of a more complete idea of just what is involved in male sex behaviour. I am, however, inevitably faced with the limitations of available data and with the very great amount of variation in behaviour as between individuals, and even more between species of farm animals.

Architecture may seem an ambitious description to apply to the mass of observational data and conjecture which at present constitutes our knowledge of male sex behaviour, but it is well to keep in mind the existence of a complex integrated structure, genetic in origin but modified by environment, which determines the way an animal behaves in response to a given situation. The object of this paper is to suggest some of the ground plan of this structure. I have given a few references in the text, but wish to express my indebtedness in particular to the work of Beach (1948), Milovanov & Smirnov-Ugrumov (1940), and Gunn (1936), whose writings on the subject have been of such fundamental importance.

The very wide field of animal behaviour has no more fascinating application than in the bull stud of any artificial insemination centre where the male is subjected to close observation over a long period of time. After a year or two's experience one becomes aware of the qualifications expected of a bull if he is to become a successful A.I. sire. His general temperament must be good, he must be placid and easy to handle, be free from all vices, and be able to produce high quality semen as and when required, and at the same time he must possess superior genetical material so that there is hope of improved production from his progeny.

All female animals of spontaneously ovulating species show a pattern of behaviour at oestrus wrich differs from that of other times of the oestrous cycle, from the time before puberty and from that when the animal is senescent. This pattern is basically the same in all species but differs in detail from one to another. The matter which is of real interest concerning oestrous behaviour is its association with ovulation. This association is important with regard to the determination of the factors which control both oestrus and ovulation. It is also of immediate interest and importance in the domestic animals because fertility depends on the observation of oestrus, and the the relation thereto of ovulation and insemination.

The Eastern Counties is an area extending from the Wash to the Thames; and includes Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Isle of Ely, Hertfordshire, Huntingdonshire, parts of Lincolnshire (Kesteven and Holland), Norfolk, East and West Suffolk, and Essex. It is well farmed, is largely arable (arable land 77.3%, pasture 19.5%, rough grazing 3.2% (1944)); and well suited to the production of abundant supplies of cereal grains which form the main basis of poultry diets. In addition, the soil types range from light sandy soils through alluvial and fen soils to heavy clay; from sandy heaths to low lying rich meadow and marsh land, and the climatic conditions are such as to suit poultry production. It is therefore not surprising to find poultry keeping in all its branches forming a profitable side line to the practice of general farming. The low lying meadow and marsh areas are particularly well suited to the rearing of ducks, on the lighter sandy soils numerous flocks of turkeys are kept, while throughout the area where suitable rough grazing exists small flocks of geese are reared. Fowls are also well distributed throughout the area on the better drained soils. The extent to which poultry are kept in the Eastern Counties can be appreciated by studying the census figures, no less than 17.7% of the fowls in England and Wales, 20.8% of the ducks, 12.6% of the geese, and 21.5% of the turkeys being reared in the Eastern Counties in 1948.

In this short paper it is proposed in the first instance to give a brief outline of the history of crop production, since it is closely related to stock production. This will be followed by an outline of the cattle in East Anglia, and finally with the possible developments in the future.

If one looks back into the cropping of the arable areas of this country, and in this case, East Anglia, one finds that in the earliest farming the rotations consisted of really a three course rotation—wheat or rye, followed in the second year, with barley, oats, peas or beans and in the third year, fallow. There was little provision for winter feed for livestock when such rotations were followed, and consequently large numbers of animals were killed annually in the autumn. About the middle of the sixteenth century, one finds the first mention of turnips for feeding to cattle in the winter, and this suggestion was quickly followed by the announcement that cabbages, carrots and parsnips were also grown for stock feed.

All our breeds of sheep, as they exist to-day, are vastly different animals to their ancestors of 100 years ago. Most counties at that time, boasted a breed or type of their own ; but, after the inception of Breed Societies, these breeds were somewhat reduced, or at any rate absorbed by other breeds. At the same time it must be freely admitted that in no other country in the world are there so many different breeds of sheep as there are in the British Isles.

In the process of improving British sheep, two breeds, the Leicester and the Southdown, stand out quite clearly, and in most of our present-day recognised breeds, the Leicester or the Southdown have at some time or other played no small part in bringing about that improvement.

It is very well known that milk records show a considerable downward trend in yield from the East to the West of England and Wales. The Bureau of Records of the Milk Marketing Board have produced some admirable maps, shaded by counties according to the average yield, and these bring out the trend very clearly ; roughly the yield declines from 730 to 630 gallons, a drop of 15 per cent. This trend in yield is not a new phenomenon. Twenty-five years ago Dr. Hammond and I found the same thing with 26 counties which by 1923 had had milk recording societies functioning for five years ; the decline was approximately from 700 to 600 gallons. We selected two societies which were at that time about at the extremes and extracted lactation figures from the milk record books of the members in an effort to probe a little deeper into the difference. I hope to refer to these two again and will only say now that Norfolk milk recorded cows gave 22.8 per cent, more milk than those of Penrith, and of this difference, 6 per cent, was due to higher yield at the start of the lactation and the rest to greater persistence of yield and to longer continued milk flow.