25YEARS AGO MR Norman Hogg, Labour MP for East Dunbartonshire, intends

to carry on with his attempt to amend the 1701 Act of Settlement. Hogg, under pressure from the Westminster establishment, withdrew a 10-minute rule bill he had planned to introduce yesterday, which would have removed from the act the prohibition of the heir to the throne to marry a Roman Catholic. He said he would return to the fray, but it was a question of choosing the right time.

50 YEARS AGO WHETHER a hungry world would be adequately fed would depend upon the plant breeder as much as on any other scientist, said Lord Strathclyde, minister of state, Scottish Office, when he opened the new building of the Scottish Society for Research in Plant Breeding at Pentlandfields, Midlothian.

"We must never forget a great part of the human race depends for survival not merely on the ability of statesmen to contrive ways of avoiding atomic war, but on the scientists' skill in finding sufficient quantities of food."

100 YEARS AGO IN the Foreign Ships committee report, it states: "It has been urged that foreign immigrant ships which call at ports in the UK should be required to comply with our regulations as to emigrant vessels whether they take emigrants on board here or not. Shipowners are not unanimous on the subject and we cannot support this contention on the ground that it is necessary in the interests of safety."

150 YEARS AGO OTTER Fishing in Loch Lomond - It has been the practice for certain persons - we cannot call them anglers - to fish Loch Lomond with tackle called The Otter. No real sportsman would ever think of killing fish by such means, for they cannot possibly make play, but are dragged into a boat, just as a schoolboy would a fish on his set-line and, from the number of hooks and the extent of surface swept over, a great many fish are pricked and made so wary that the sport of the fair fisher is spoiled.