2 DECEMBER 1932, Page 13

A budget of inquiries has reached me about the publieations

of the Airicultural F,conornics Research Institute at Oxford. The Report for last year and the list of publications and back numbers of Occasional Notes may be had for the asking of the Secretary at the Institute. The publications are issued it almost all cases by the Clarendon Press, Oxford. A good deal of energy has been put lately into the statistics of milk pro- duction, and much of value to farmers—and politicians discovered. It is an indication of the changes in industry that scientific discoveries may make that the greatest increase in imports is in " milk powder." Its smallness of bulk and its consistency threaten to make it a serious rival to fresh milk. On the subject of alternatives, it is singularly illogical that fresh cream costs twice as much as cream converted with much labour into butter and reconverted by a special apparatus into cream ; and the reason is not to be found in the superior demand for the dearer product. Butter, in short, is absurdly cheap.