Problems of stock feeding.

Dr. J. Russell Greig (Moredun Institute, Gilmerton, Midlothian) My acceptance of an invitation to provide an introduction to today’s proceedings has imposed upon me a task much more difficult than I had a t first anticipated. The history of nutrition is largely a history of agriculture and I propose this morning briefly to refer to a number of historic happenings in Scotland, to indicate how these had a bearing upon the science of nutrition and also to glance in passing at the conditions of husbandry in Scotland as they obtained from time to time. Little is known of agriculture in Scotland before the 12th century but then, under the direction and guidance of the monasteries, the cultivation of the soil and the rearing of livestock, if primitive in character, were assiduously practised and there is reason to believe were being progressively developed. All this was changed by the sudden and tragic death of King Alexander 111, which occurred in 1286. The death of Alexander closed an epoch. Immediately there arose the War of Succession to be followed by the Wars of Independence, followed in turn by four centuries of strife, unrest and consequent poverty. It has been truly said that even in the south, from the Treaty of Birgham in 1290 to the Act of Union in 1707, the men of the Borders had their minds filled with forays and raids, with the theft of others’ beasts and the defence of their own, rather than with efforts to improve the quality of their land and their livestock. But with the Union of 1707 came peace and a new era and, although in the first half of the 18th century, agriculture as a whole made relatively little advance, there were then made, as we shall see, numerous important individual advances that prepared the way for the great agricultural revolution which may be said to date from 1750. Let us look a t the state of affairs in the early seventeen hundreds. The land lay completely unenclosed except round the demesnes of the nobility and gentry. Not a dyke, not a fence, not a hedge, and over extensive areas of the country not a tree as far as the eye could reach. There was some truth in Dr. Johnson’s ponderous remark that “a tree in Scotland is as rare as a horse in Venice”. The food of the people consisted almost entirely of oats (the old, poor grey oat) and bere which, although a poor sort of barley, was supposed to be the only kind that would grow in the soil. There were also some pease, and green kail from the yard, for almost no other kind of vegetable was known to the common folk. Animal flesh was almost entirely