During the fifty year period from 1936-1986 the modern agricultural revolution occurred, in which, for the first time, science was properly harnessed to the improvement in agricultural productivity. The authors quantify this improvement and identify the work of UK scientists that was seminal to the scientific and technological advances on which the revolution was founded. The topics covered include the advances in animal nutrition (in which the late Kenneth Blaxter was an acknowledged pioneer), animal and plant breeding, soil fertility, weed, pest and disease control, veterinary medicine,...

Two Greek cities which in their time were leading states in the Mediterranean world, Selinus in Sicily and Cyrene in Libya, set up inscriptions of the kind called sacred laws, but regulating worship on a larger scale than elsewhere - Selinus in the mid fifth century B.C., Cyrene in the late fourth. In different ways, the content and the format of both inscriptions are so unusual that they have baffled understanding.

At Selinus, a large lead tablet with two columns of writing upside down to each other is thought to be a remedy for homicide pollution arising from civil strife, but most of...