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With the introduction of high-yielding varieties of wheat and other crops during the mid-sixties, the chances of a widespread famine occurring again in India and elsewhere are considerably reduced. The real challenge facing the developing countries during the current and future decades is now recognized as one of providing employment opportunities for all those who want to work. It is also widely recognized now that economic growth does not automatically ensure growth in employment opportunities adequate to match the growth in labor force. The planners in these countries are beginning to realize that plans to utilize human resources must be explicitly considered in evolving the development strategy to be followed. Implicit in this argument is that the development strategy followed hitherto has not done so.

Scientific development of plant pathology in Japan began with the introduction of European and American civilization in the early years of the Meiji era, although some accounts concerning plant diseases have been found in earlier records. These records show that the ancient people recognized that plant diseases were injuring their crops, but because they had no conception of the nature and cause of these maladies, they superstitiously observed mysteriously deformed diseased plants with surprise and terror. According to Shirai (90) there is an account in the historic book Zoku-Nihon-Ki that in January 713 A.D. deformed rice plants were presented to the Emperor. These were thought to be a transformation of grasses into rice (27, 72). According to Shirai (90), these could have been rice ears infected by downy mildew (Phytophthora (Sclerophthora) macrospora). Ganoderma lucidum is a comparatively common decay fungus in Japan, attack­ ing stems and roots of coniferous and deciduous trees (21). From very early times development of the fruit body of this fungus was considered to be a sign of happy events. Many descriptions and much information on this are found in the classics; accounts in Nihon-Shoki show that in 678 A.D. the fruit body of this fungus was presented to the Emperor and that in 726 A.D. this fungus developed fruit bodies in the Imperial Palace (27). Many ancient classics indicate that blast disease of rice plants was very serious and, together with unfavorable weather conditions, caused much damage to rice crops. People then suffered severe famine (27, 72). The first record of blast disease of rice in Japan appears in a book, Koka Shunju (45, 101), written by M. Tsuchiya and published in 1707. He emphasized the relation between environmental condi­ tions and occurrence of the disease. Miyanaga (65), Horii (35), Kojima (57), and Konishi (58) also referred to rice blast disease in their books. Konishi (58) empha­ sized especially the relationship of cultural conditions of rice plants (e.g. nitrogenous fertilizers, deep plowing of soil, density of seeding) to the occurrence of blast disease. According to Hino (27), accounts concerning the following plant diseases or fungi

The famine in Ethiopia, as in the Sahel, is not simply a ‘natural’ disaster but has social and economic origins. Moreover, the suffering is not simply the compounding of the effects of food shortage by the harsh burdens borne by tenant formers. While southern Ethiopia, where famine is now beginning to strike, had a feudal land system imposed in the 19th Century, the northern provinces where the famine first hit has a system where there were lords of the land but no landlords and peasants had the security of access to land even though they paid ‘tithes’. The commercialisation and mechanisation of agriculture in the last generation has eroded those rights. Landlords are becoming capitalist farmers and a landless class is growing. The famine is accelerating these processes, just as it is exacerbated by them.

Archaeological and textual data, which are both biased and fragmentary, are essentially complementary in any effort to reconstruct the political systems prevailing in Egypt between 2600 and 1780 B.C. An examination of certain aspects of the archaeological data suggests that the political significance of royal burial complexes is rather ambiguous, but that of the cemeteries of the capital and the provinces is more explicit, once the social and chronological complexity of these sites is understood. Some aspects of the provincial data also suggest that the collapse of the comparatively highly‐centralized system of the Old Kingdom, the effects of which were still visible after 170 years of formal reunification, was due to sustained famine created by natural causes rather than a failure in the political system. Finally, any effort to reconstruct Egyptian foreign policy during this period must refer to the archaeological data since the relevant textual sources are heavily biased.

As evidence has accumulated on the prosperity of the American South under slavery prior to the Civil War, attention has turned to a search for explanations for the apparent stagnation of the southern economy after the Civil War. One class of explanations involves the argument that the South experienced special difficulties in recovering her place in the international cotton market during the late 1860's and 1870's. In one version of this hypothesis, the presence of “new” sources of supply, stimulated by the cotton famine of 1861–65, acted to displace American cotton in world markets during this period. A second version, recently proposed by Mark Aldrich, argues that appreciation of the dollar resulting from capital imports and northern economic expansion forced American cotton to compete with the rest of the world on unfavorable terms prior to the resumption of specie payments in 1879.

Most areas of famine could be greatly reduced with proper planning. Improvements in food production in nearby relatively favorable areas could alleviate the present situation whereby a disastrous food shortage must become "newsworthy" throughout the world before the ponderous machinery of international assistance and very expensive intercontinental staple grain shipments are made. Such planning would allow man to be far less at the mercy of the annual whims of seasonal weather for his food supply.

Bihar, in the northeast of India, is one of the largest (population 56.4 million), most overcrowded and impoverished states of that country. The famine of 1966-67 which centered on Bihar and result...

G UILDS OF ARTISANS, brotherhoods, and confraternities flowered in Western Europe during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. To be sure, a corporate spirit was part of the European ethos itself, as has been shown by the presence of burial societies of early Christians in Rome. Their importance greatly increased, however, in the late middle ages, a product of an age responding to the stoic doctrines of St. Francis and St. Dominic, coupled with an entirely secular phenomenon-the emergence of the city. Victims of famine and plague deserted the countryside for the cities, only to fall prey to unemployment, poverty, and enforced vagrancy. The establishment of confraternities of lay men and women had the dual objective of protecting members against such misfortunes and practicing works of charity. Such brotherhoods represented the birth of a social conscience in Europe. The Iberian Peninsula did not remain immune to this corporate sentiment sweeping Europe. Furthermore, the societies of Spain and Portugal included different religions, races, and languages, and afforded opportunities for frequent intercultural contacts. By the fifteenth century there existed in the cities of Spain and Portugal Catholic brotherhoods that counted among their members blacks brought from Africa as slaves, as well as whites of Iberian stock. Despite minor administrative differences, all brotherhoods pos

Proposals for a nutritional support program in Niger based on findings of a May 1974 study are presented. The program would emphasize complementary food provision for children below 10 years and pregnant and lactating women among a population of between 100000 and 200000 persons. Emergency treatment feeding and nutrition rehabilitation would be provided initially and local food items would be used when possible. The assistance would be time-limited and divided into phases dependent on the outcome of harvests. Continuous monitoring would be built into the program. Background information on the Sahelian zone Niger and prior relief measures is provided. Food provision for the general population and the vulnerable groups is then discussed. Aspects of program adjustment to the Niger context are detailed including a financial assessment of alternative program components. Implementation of the food provisions nutritional status assessment and monitoring and necessary personnel are discussed.

If the drought can be seen as an act of nature, the same cannot be said for the famine, which is largely the result of a policy of agricultural exploitation carried out for the benefit of the great powers in the Sahel. This famine crudely reveals that what is called development or aid is nothing other than a policy of exploitation. Furthermore, this famine offers the opportunity for a radical transformation of the traditional modes of agricultural production, promoting the establishment of a highly productive system of capitalist agriculture that is not only oriented towards the satisfaction of industrial needs, but also capable of supplying food to capitalist countries.

“The famine started the exodus more than a century ago. Is the racial (sic) memory of it still continuing it? Has it set up some unfathomed psychosis deep down in the Celtic psyche which fills the heart of the Gael with an insatiable restlessness, a cosmic wanderlust, a sort of demi-urge that goads him to the waiting ship and far-distant shore?” Summary ON THE CAUSES OF IRISH EMIGRATION In this paper several generally accepted reasons for Irish emigration (population density, poor marriage prospects for females and internal family pressures) will be rejected. Today's emigration has its own structure and its own contemporary causes. It is argued that emigrating is not any longer final in character, but can better be described as migrant labour. On the basis of a statistical analysis and the results of sociological fieldwork in a rural trade centre in S. W. Ireland it is shown that economic factors and the standard motive of adventure are most important in explaining why the Irish emigrate nowadays. The relation between these two types of factors is one between necessary and sufficient conditions. Resume Cet article refute plusieurs des causes generalement acceptees de l'emigration irlandaise (densite demographique, esperance de mariage faible pour les jeunes filles et pressions familiales). L'emigration actuelle a ses propres structures et ses causes spkcifiques. L'auteur dtmontre que l'emigration ne presente plus un caractere definitif mais constitue une migration temporaire de travail. Des analyses statistiques et une recherche sociologique menee dam une ville situee dans une zone rurale du sud-ouest de l'Irlande, ont montre que les facteurs economiques et l'aspiration classique e l'aventure constituent des facteurs tres importants des migrations irlandaises actuelles. La relation entre ces deux types de motivations est une entre conditions ntcessaires et suffisantes de la migration. LES CAUSES DE l'EMIGRATION IRLANDAISE

Ethiopia is rich in indigenous oral plant lore. The use of wild plants in the native diet, in religious ceremonies as well as for magic and medicinal purposes is commonplace and widespread. This tradition is the result of depressed agricultural production due to primitive agricultural methods, frequent natural calamities such as desert locust and army worm infestation, frequent tribal fueds, etc., resulting in chronic food shortages for the rural agricultural population on the one hand, and the rich floristic wealth of the country on the other. Ethiopians possess a sound knowledge about proper diet and their problem is often the lack of an adequate and constant food supply. The knowledge, tradition, and opportunity of using wild plants (fruits, leafy vegetables, starchy roots, etc.) as supplements to their diets is thus wide. In general, wild plants are consumed more by young rural males than older ones in times of peace, and more are consumed by all ages and both sexes in periods of famine, wars and at the height of the dry season each year.

tury that the specter of timber scarcity became so persistent as to goad the rulers into passing preventive ordinances and founding a forestry profession to enforce them [14]. In mid-seventeenth century, at the end of the devastating Thirty Years' War, population was growing steeply, and industries were becoming prominent: mining and the processing of minerals; glass and china manufacture; the making of charcoal, potash, and resin derivatives. Every one of these activities used wood as an input. The doctrine of mercantilism was at large, and huge quantities of wood were floated down to the seaports for shipbuilding in pursuit of export trade [9, p. 21]. Foresters, who by then were managing forests for wood and other resources, looked around them at the exploitation and preached that there would be a timber shortage and that only a policy of sustained yield could avert disaster. The threat of famine and the necessity for sustained yield became two of the tenets of faith of the forestry professional subculture [12]. That was decades before the time of Thomas Robert Malthus's Essay. The old tenets of faith were echoed in the teachings of America's forestry fathers, Bernhard Fernow [15, 35] and Gifford Pinchot [28], and are reechoed today in the thinking of foresters and of many others as well. The notion of impending timber scarcity is not altogether ridiculous. The world's physical inventory of timber has shrunk steadily over the centuries. Real prices of timber generally have risen. Consider our western softwood mainstay, Douglas-fir, on the national forests. Before the turn of the present century, it was essentially without market value. Speaking in terms of constant 1967 dollars per thousand board feet of standing timber, the average price was about $2 at the time of World War I, $4 just before World War II, and $8 immediately thereafter. It had cleared $16 by the mid-1950s and $32 by the mid-'60s [49, p. 332]. It completed still another doubling a year or two ago. Paper, which is produced by a heavily concentrated industry, has had a relatively circumspect price history. But take the case of lumber, which is the undifferentiated product-a rather heterogeneous product--of a highly fragmented industry, long the dominant user of wood. Its prices are notably sensitive to resource conditions. If one searches out wholesale price data for the United States since the 1790s, deflates the index with an all-commodity average, and carries out the necessary splicing of successive series, he finds an amazingly consistent long-run upward trend of nearly 2 percent annually [19, pp. 17-18]. The trend appears to be somewhat the result of raw-material cost trends and greatly the result of lagging technology in the conversion of standing timber to end products-that is to say, it is evidence of a supply problem, a scarcity problem [60, pp. 179-181; 61, pp. 517-519; 62, p. 596]. The long trend of lumber prices has comprised bursts in which real price has risen at an annual rate of 5 to 10 percent or more during a period of 2 to 5 years or so, interspersed by calm periods as long as 30 years when the yearly rise was averaging perhaps one-half percent or less. That is to say, the long-term up-sloping graph is formed of a series of near plateaus situated at successively higher elevations by virtue of the steep cliffs connecting them. 1 "Timber" refers to standing trees as sources of wood, whereas "forest" refers to biological systems involving trees for wood or for other purposes, such as scenery. Logs, lumber, plywood, paper, and other commodities derived from the substance of trees are referred to collectively as "timber products," or "wood products."

This article was written before information on the great Ethiopian famine of 1973 had reached the outside world. Since I was not then aware of the catastrophe, the facts given here should not be regarded as a reconstruction of the causes of the famine. On the contrary, the deterioration in the conditions of the indigenous inhabitants had been known for some years – in fact, since the beginning of the capitalist offensive in the north-eastern lowlands of Ethiopia, namely the Awash Valley. I had already predicted the famine in late 1971 in two reports,1 and in discussions with officials of the Ethiopian Government.

Inthe years preceding the Great Famine the people of Ireland were separated in space and spirit by the divisive workings of history and geography and by the survival of ancient local customs that were feudal and in some instances, tribal in origin. In 1825, according to a contemporary observer, there were “different districts in Ireland almost as unlike each other as any two countries in Europe.” A thousand light years and more separated the Georgian splendor of Dublin from the rude Gaelic society of the West. And in all the provinces there were pockets where distinctive local cultures stubbornly endured; like the baronies of Bargy and Forth, in the extreme southeast corner of Wexford, whose inhabitants clung to a Chaucerian dialect until the middle of the century, or the fishing village of Claddagh, outside the city of Galway, where the people maintained a severe aloofness, marrying among themselves and ignoring outsiders.

The tide of Irish immigration to the United States, which reached its crest during and following the famine years of the eighteen-forties, was second only to that of the Germans in the nineteenth century. Consequently, the Irish immigrants who arrived by the hundreds of thousands and the succeeding generations of Irish-Americans became one of the most important national groups in the American population, at the same time maintaining a keen interest in their native land.

During the four decades that followed the great famine, over three million people born in Ireland emigrated to the U.S.A. In the seventies and eighties these Irish-Americans and their descendants played a distinct role in Irish politics. The period was a critical era in the history of Ireland. It was marked by the beginnings of Gladstone’s ‘mission to pacify Ireland’ and of the home-rule movement under Butt; by the ‘land war’ of 1879–82, when the tenant farmers, under the leadership of Parnell and Davitt, offered a successful massresistance to the landlords; by the unchallenged ascendancy of Parnell and his party in national politics for the next eight years; and by the transformation of the conditions of the Anglo-Irish conflict through the conversion of Gladstone and the British liberal party to home rule.

In olden times, when War left our home or whatever remained of it and might still be called a home by sheer habit, it was not unusual that Famine and Pestilence stood grinning at the threshold. Most civilized peoples are now spared these ultimate terrors, however long and ferocious war may be, because of our technical progress and also of certain extraordinary conventions under cover of which the works of mercy and of death can be carried on almost simultaneously. These scourges were far more effective and dreadful than war itself, and the fear of them was so great that when they appeared at his doorsill, man could think only of them and of the curse of God, he had no mind left to think of the evils of war, of its causes, of his own responsibility. Now that these terrors are spared to us or so mitigated that the fear of them is almost hushed, we can listen more deliberately to the voice of our conscience. On the morrow of a great war, whether victor or vanquished, any man who is not utterly devoid of imagination, rubs his eyes and looks around him, aghast. The war through which we have just lived, called 56,000,000 men to arms and cost 26,000,000 casualties, 11,000,000 men killed and 221,000,000,000 dollars in treasure (1). The war is over, but the destruction remains. We have got to make it good. There is no escape from it, and there are eleven millions less of the bravest and the best to share our burden. They will never be with us again. As to the wealth wantonly destroyed, no man of sense will be deluded by the idea that the vanquished can be expected to restore it. We have all repeatedly been made to feel that whatever the system of property be, there is no wealth but common wealth. You cannot throw a pound of sugar into the sea or break a pane of glass without injuring me. Neither can we impoverish our neighbours without impoverishing ourselves. That is plain enough.

IT is a privilege and an honor to participate in the Sixty-fourth Annual Meeting of the American Public Health Association, an organization which through the years has contributed so much in inspiration, illumination and guidance to the great objective of protecting and advancing the health of the people. It was logical and highly appropriate that measures for strengthening and extending the public health services and the special services for the health and welfare of mothers and children should be incorporated in the National Social Security Program recently authorized by Congress. Throughout the ages war, pestilence and famine have been the great specters under whose shadows men have built homes and women have borne and reared children. Civilization is still at grips with war, whose power has been vastly augmented by science. In the Western World we no longer speak of pestilence, though we are no less vitally concerned with forces menacing life and health, and we have translated famine into unemployment and economic depression. It is unnecessary to emphasize in this

For fifty thousand years, more or less, man led a comparatively simple life. The community, if not the family, was economically independent. Each small group produced all necessary materials for food, clothing, warmth, and shelter. Division of labor only slightly developed. Then, only one hundred and fifty years ago, began the age of steam and electricity. Factories and mills were built; rapid communication and transportation drew the world together; the modern city sprang up. Specialization in production made each group dependent on various other groups. A strike among coal miners in the dead of winter came to imperil the lives of millions. When the board of directors of a corporation in one city decided to decrease its output, a machinist employed by another corporation three thousand miles away was thrown out of work, his wife was forced into industry, and his new-born babe died of malnutrition. The outstanding effect of the Industrial Revolution was to bring about unprecedented complexity of social and economic organization. Now, at the end of the Great War, the world is in chaos. Humanity seems impotent before a prodigious array of political, social, and economic problems. Famine is abroad in the world. In a large part of Europe dangerous radicalism is in control. Europe is economically disintegrating for lack of goods; the United States has the materials and the labor for manufacturing these goods, but seems unable to make the domestic and international adjustments

The Rising of the Moon is Nicholas Maw's second opera, and like its predecessor, One Man Show, it is a comedy. As far as subject matter and its treatment go, however, the resemblance ends there. One Man Show is a farce, based on a flimsy comic idea by Saki. The Rising of the Moon is a romantic comedy whose central situation—though necessarily presented in high theatrical relief—is essentially realistic and depends for its effect on the portrayal of a number of true-to-life three-dimensional characters. Beverley Cross's libretto, based on an entirely original idea, is set in Ireland in the year 1875. This was a tragic period in Irish history. After years of unavailing struggle for home rule and for the emancipation of a Catholic people from minority government by Protestants, Ireland had found herself in the mid-nineteenth century still bound in a most unfavourable union with England. Her economic and industrial growth was deliberately kept down by legislation in Westminster, prompted by fears of competition with home industry. The poverty of most Irish peasants was extreme, as it had been even before the potato famine of the late 1840s, and many were still suffering at the hands of unscrupulous landlords who were quite prepared to implement laws which made eviction the normal penalty for non-payment of rent. In these circumstances the English were naturally both hated and feared. Yet those who tried to stir popular feeling into action—Daniel O'Connell, the Young Irelanders, the Fenians—found their hands tied by Ireland's internal religious and social divisions, and by the listlessness of an underfed, underclothed, even underhoused people. Such revolutionary outbreaks as took place were isolated and poorly organised, and although the English executive in Ireland—including the army—might tend to regard all Irish peasants as potential rebels, they had long since learnt that the rebel bark was a good deal worse than the insurgent bite, and so they treated the natives accordingly.

War can be overcome only when individuals identify themselves with supra-national groups more strongly than with mutually exclusive, competing national groups. Identification with a world federation will be enhanced if all people possess (1) common features (a world language and basic common education in world problems); (2) common rituals and symbols (flag, world anthem, common currency and postage); (3) common goals (better distribution of goods, avoidance of war and famine); (4) symbols of home, family, and local groups in the world government; (5) common enemies (disturbers of the peace) and an efficient police force combining the romantic appeal of the Northwest Mounted and the Red Cross. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved)

It is maintained by many individuals that there is no such thing as positive evil in existence; that the indulging in a contrary opinion would, in fact, be a reflection upon the wisdom and beneficence of the Divine Being; and that those events which we call evils are, in reality, only blessings in disguise, or, as the poet expresses the sentiment,— “All nature is but art, unknown to thee; All chance, direction, which thou canst not see; All discord, harmony, not understood; All partial evil, universal good.” It may, probably, be rather a difficult task fully and cordially on all occasions to subscribe to these doctrines; yet still, it must be acknowledged by all thinking men, that few events occur, however afflictive to individuals they may be, without their being the means of accomplishing some good end. And we may fully agree with the expression of the poet, in the last line of the quotation, if we qualify his meaning by presuming that he intends to convey the idea that partial evil results in universal good. That our common country has, within the last twelve months, experienced a grievous visitation in the failure of the potato crop, which produced a partial famine, with its attendant evils, particularly in Ireland, cannot be gainsaid; and we must all endeavour to make a right use of these afflictions. To the farmer this reads a lesson peculiarly applicable. It is undoubtedly his province to provide food for the country; and he is amenable to ...

The potato blight which in the 1840s became so destructive in Ireland as to cause wide-spread distress and much loss of life also brought the Netherlands to the verge of famine. The purpose of this article is to evaluate the extent of the damage to the Dutch potato crops in the “hungry forties” and to consider some of its consequences: the rise of the food prices, the spread of pauperism, social unrest, the attitudes of the population and the measures taken by the Government.

Opening ParagraphThe village of Ulu lies at about latitude 10° N. between the White Nile and the Blue Nile in the southern part of the Fung area of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. The surrounding country is mostly thin savannah on black cotton soil but there are occasional outcrops of laterite as at Ulu itself. Water-holes are found and may be made in the larger watercourses after these have dried up at the termination of the rainy season. The dry season is roughly December to May. The inhabitants of Ulu call themselves Fung and are black Moslems of a possibly aboriginal stock. Wandering Araboid nomads of the Mesallamia and other tribes with camels, cattle, sheep, and goats may be encountered visiting traditional grazing areas. The Fung of Ulu cultivate millet, cow-peas and sesame seed as subsistence crops and in normal times surplus is bartered with the nomads for animals and no doubt clarified butter also. A small amount of cash is obtained by the gathering of acacia gum which is disposed of through the local Arab merchant.

In attempting to survey the anemia situation in North China several factors presented themselves to us as significant. (1) Even outside the so-called famine areas food deficiencies are common, particularly qualitative deficiencies. This point is elucidated by the work of Hsien Wu1 and his collaborators, who showed that the North China diet is low in fat and on the verge of fat soluble vitamin deficiency. (2) Attacks of prolonged diarrhea, due to dysentery or to yet unknown causes, in a population living on such a diet are apt especially to bring out 2 groups of symptoms: of anemia and of hydrops. (3) We were impressed with the fact that severe secondary anemias of unknown origin, when hospitalized, showed a seemingly spontaneous recovery in the course of about 2 months. Such anemias of lesser severity were also seen during pregnancy, on proper diet already showing marked improvement before term. These anemias are hematologically characterized by a color index in the neighborhood of unity, of the absence o...

The Lithuanians in America form one of the least known immigrant groups. The census of 1930 gives 193,606 foreign-born Lithuanians and 245,589 of foreign or mixed parentage. Lithuanians claim that 750,000 is a minimum estimate. Until 1910 Lithuanians were not counted in the census, and many are still listed as Poles, Russians, or Germans. Migration began about 1850, owing to a famine in Lithuania; others came in 1867 following an insurrection; by 1880 the tide increased, reaching its peak about 1896. In America they tend to form settlements and organize numerous societies, associations, and co-operatives. They exhibit the typical immigrant tendency to perpetuate Old World factional divisions. They do not assimilate easily, though the process is faster in the second generation.

So Joseph bought all the land of Egypt for Pharaoh; for the Egyptians sold every man his field, because the famine was sore upon them: and the land became Pharaoh's. And as for the people, he removed them to the cities from one end of the border of Egypt even to the other end thereof. Only the land of the priests bought he not: for the priests had a portion from Pharaoh and did eat their portion which Pharaoh gave them: wherefore they sold not their land. Then Joseph said unto the people, "Behold, I have bought you this day and your land for Pharaoh; lo, here is seed for you, and you shall sow the land. And it shall come to pass at the ingatherings, that ye shall give a fifth unto Pharaoh, and four parts shall be your own, for seed of the field, and for your food, and for them of your households and for food for your little ones." And they said, "Thou hast saved our lives: let us find favor in the sight of my lord, and we will be Pharaoh's servants." And Joseph made it a statute concerning the land of Egypt unto this day, that Pharaoh should have the fifth: only the land of the priests alone became not Pharaoh's. GENESIS 47: 20-26

The author investigated statistically the poor or bad harvest and famine in Tohoku district of Japan from the standpoint of agroclimatology. The data of crop yield and weather conditions during past 360 years were used for this purpose. The results are summarized as follows;1. The poor or bad harvest and famine due to both continued rain and low temperature in summer season have occurred more frequently in Iwate, Miyagi and Yamagata prefectures than in Fukushima and Akita prefectures.2. It was found that famine durations, in which famines observed frequently, occurred repeatedly with a period of about 80 years during past 360 years. Famines continued frequently for two years. A period of about 30 years was also recognized among recent famines.3. The bad harvest and famine occurred mainly around the years with a minimum number of sun spot. The famine at years with a minimum or maximum number of sun spot was caused by cool summer, but it was difficult to decide the main reason for the famines at years with ordinary number of sun spot. Before 1900 A.D., the bad harvest or famine occurred almost always when crops were damaged by an early frost.

Only a few years ago many noted agriculturists and demographers were predicting world famine within this decade or the next because they were convinced that the race between food production and population was being lost (Paddock, 1967; Revelle, 1968). The world has witnessed an amazing turnabout! Tremendous food production gains have occurred in many of the developing nations within the past few years. This widely publicized phenomenon has been termed the "green revolution." It has resulted from a combina

Bengal, which prior to partition of India covered the state of West Bengal in India and Bangladesh, suffered from a calamitous famine in 1943, when it was estimated that two miIIion people died of starvation. The author was ap­ pOinted as Mycologist in Bengal in October 1943 when the famine was at its height. When he travelled to join his new assignment on 18th of October 1943, he could see dead bodies and starving and dying persons all along the way from Bahudurabad Ghat on the Brahmaputra to Dacca. This horrendous situation of several thousands of men, women, and children dying of starva­ tion continued throughout October, November, and December in and around all the important cities in Bengal, especially Calcutta and Dacca. There was a war raging in many theaters in the world. The British empire was visibly crumbling. The victorious Japanese army, in collaboration with Indian National Army, was knocking at the eastern gates of India. It is in this context that a serious shortage in rice production occurred in 1942. As there was very little marketable surplus from 1942 harvest, the price of rice started rising from the beginning of 1943 in all parts of Bengal. The civil administra­ tion could not and did not cope with the situation created by the shortage. Soon the cost of rice was beyond the reach of ordinary people. Most of the rural population migrated to the cities in the hope of finding employment and rice. Finding neither, they slowly died of starvation. Though administrative failures were immediately responsible for this hu­ man suffering, the principal cause of the short crop production in 1942 was the epidemic of helminthosporium disease which attacked the rice crop in that year. This was caused by Helminthosporium oryzae Breda de Haan[=Co­ chliobolus miyabeanus (Ito & Kuribayashi) Drechsler ex Dastur. Nothing as devastating as the Bengal epiphytotic of 1942 has been recorded in plant pathological literature. The only other instance that bears comparison in loss sustained by a food crop and the human calamity that followed in its wake is the Irish potato famine of 1845. The loss sustained by the rice crop in 1942 might be judged from Table 1, which gives the yield of the principal rice varieties widely grown in Bengal as recorded at the rice research stations of Chinsura and Bankura for the years 1941 and 1942. It may be seen that the loss sustained by the early maturing

The relationship between material starvation during pregnancy and the mental status of the offspring in adult life is examined using as the touchstone the famine in Holland in the winter of 1944-1945. 7 famine-stricken cities in Western Holland were compared with 11 control Dutch cities that were not affected. A retrospective cohort study was made of 125000 males born between January 1 1944-December 31 1946 who were inducted into the army when they were about 19 years old. It is inferred that 20000 were exposed to the famine through maternal starvation. The men were divided into 9 cohorts by month of conception and month of birth. The dependent variables used are 1) severe mental retardation; 2) mild mental retardation; and 3) intelligent quotient. 2 postulated moderator variables are 1) fetal age of cohort at time of exposure; and 2) birth weight. 2 confounding variables--fertility and social class--have been controlled in the analysis. Despite several reservations which are discussed it was concluded that 1) starvation during pregnancy had no detectable effects on the adult mental performance of surviving male offspring; 2) mental performance in surviving adult males from a total population had no clear association w ith changing levels of mean birth weight; and 3) the association of social class with mental performance was strong. However 2 alternative hypotheses are presented to explain the absence of detectable effects from the famine: 1) survivors might have been selected from fetuses unimpaired by maternal starvation while those impaired suffered early death; and 2) postnatal learning might have compensated for neurological impairment. The results seem positive in 2 respects. They point to a high order of protection to the fetus in utero or to great resiliency or both. And they affirm the association between social environment and mental performance.