1. It has not been possible to show that the frequency of red/green defectives is different in a school of art from that in the population as a whole, or that the distribution of frequencies of sub-types is different, either for men or women.

2. One colour defective out of seven did not know of the defect until tested in this research, four were tested by a doctor at school before coming to the college of art and two were tested informally by friends after coming to the college. In every case where it was used by non-psychologists the Ishihara Test seems to have given unsatisfactory information, and in this research it was very unsatisfactory except for crude screening.

3. All the subjects showed surprising powers of adaptation, partly as a result of realizing their difficulties consciously and learning to avoid colours which would give rise to difficulty.

4. It is clear that with better testing, which reveals the degree and type of defect accurately, and a more understanding approach on the part of a trained psychologist who realizes how to explain a person's colour difficulties and to give him insight into the nature of his problems, much help could be given. It should not be necessary and is not desirable that all red/green defectives should be excluded from schools of art, because some of them may have quite considerable artistic ability.

A postal questionnaire was sent to one randomly selected half of the general practitioners on the Sheffield Executive Council list in April 1967 concerning the advice they give about family planning; 90% responded, and of these 78% suggest contraceptive measures on their own initiative. All the respondents either advise patients directly, refer them elsewhere, or both; 93% will on occasion advise the patient themselves, and 73% refer patients to the FPA. Of those who advise directly 92% prescribe the pill; 32 % of the respondents have had training in contraceptive methods. Doctors trained in Ireland were less likely to suggest contraception measures on their own initiative or to prescribe the pill, and more likely to prescribe the safe period than doctors trained elsewhere in the British Isles.

This paper reports the findings of longitudinal studies of married primigravidae resident in Aberdeen city:

(1) All 1026 primigravidae delivered in 1949 were followed up 5 years later.

(2) A 1-in-6 random sample of primigravidae delivered 1950–53 (330 women) were studied intensively and followed up at 5 and 10 years.

The findings are biased in favour of families of manual workers because more upper social class families left Aberdeen.

Many primigravidae had no definite ideas on family size but they made up their minds or changed their preferences (sometimes to accommodate to reality) as they gained experience of marriage and motherhood. Most women wanted 2 or 3 children and none wanted more than 4 children.

There were striking differentials in fertility at both 5 and 10 years. Women who were under 20 years of age when they had their first baby, those who conceived prenuptially, and those married to a semi-skilled or unskilled manual worker had the largest families at both 5 and 10 years. At 5 years, although on average such women were having intercourse more frequently, they were the least likely to have been regular users of contraceptives.

Two-thirds of all pregnancies which occurred in the first 5 years were ‘unintended’. Only 15% of couples had used contraceptives regularly from marriage and a further 20% became regular users in the 5 years following the birth of their first child. At the end of the first 5 years, 10% of women already had more children ‘than they felt able to manage without excessive strain’. The number increased in the following years but was modified partly by delegation of responsibility for a few children to other women but more especially by the liberal policy to sterilization pursued in Aberdeen. The repetition of the disadvantages in the childhood environment of the largest families is illustrated. It is argued that ‘the pill’, which was not available to the women in the studies reported, may reduce the number of ‘unintended‘ pregnancies in future, but that sterilization may remain the most satisfactory measure of family limitation in a small group of women whose way of life is not conducive to forward planning and sustained rational behaviour.

This study analyses, for the dynamic economy of a typical less developed country (LDC), the significance for economic development over 30 years of gradual reductions in age-specific fertility rates (assumed to result from a government-supported birth reduction campaign).

The computer results, using parameters typical of poorer LDCs, include the following:

1. A modest birth control programme, costing perhaps 30 cents a year per head of national population, can raise average income over only 15 years by almost twice the percentage that it would rise without birth control;

2. Such a birth control programme, including more exposed couples every year until half of them are practising contraception, yields an undiscounted return on cost of 13 times in 5 years and 80 times in 30 years;

3. The value of permanently preventing the birth of a marginal infant is about twice an LDCs annual income per head;

4. Without birth control, to achieve similar rises in income per head, the rate of productive innovation would have to be about 1½ times the typical rate assumed;

5. Saving propensities would have to be from 2 to 3 times as great as are assumed typical if similar income increases per head are to be realized without birth control.

The model employed uses age-specific death, fertility, and consumption rates for an annually changing age distribution of population. It also uses a national production function that takes into account the changing stocks and productivities of labour and capital, saving propensities that vary with disposable income and the rate of productive innovation. Consequently, it can trace, in more detail than any demographic–economic model yet described in the literature, the incidence of whatever fertility reductions may result from government or private birth control programmes.*

The fall in the birth rate in Australia, from 23·6 per 1000 population in 1946 to 19·4 in 1967 is analysed according to various biosocial factors: the age composition of the female population and the age incidence of marriage in relation to it, the timing of births, the size of completed family and the overall effect of the variables.

Anencephaly and spina bifida cystica, malformations of the central nervous system, are due to failure of closure of the neural tube. These malformations are a major cause of stillbirth, infant death and (in the case of spina bifida) of childhood morbidity in Britain today.

Their aetiology is not known in detail. There are, however, indications from family studies and from the striking racial variation in their incidence (which is in part at least maintained after migration) that genetic factors are important in their causation. There is also evidence from maternal age and birth order effects, secular and seasonal variation, and social class effects that environmental factors also are important in their aetiology.