Gaumont-British Instructional

The Case of The Missing Scene is a children's crime thriller that has been designed in the tradition of classic British children's films. A camera team takes pictures of rare birds from a hide when a poacher happens to get into the picture. The evidence (namely shot 63) disappears under mysterious circumstances. As always in these films, the case can only be solved with the help of a few bright children.

Story of how two youngsters round up crooks planning to blow up the British fleet off Gibraltar.

"If they were as rare as orchids we would probably rave about them" opens this film in the Secrets of Nature series, directed by the prolific Mary Field. The mesmerising time-lapse photography is offset by a jokey commentary voiced by EVH Emmett, then best known as the voice of the Gaumont newsreel. The flippant tone is exemplified by his comment on the range of responses to dandelions: "Some gardeners tear up the lawn and lay crazy paving, some tear up a high cliff and jump off".

A dramatization to promote the Territorial Army.

Explores the natural history of the otter, depicted through the fictitious account of a day in the life of Otto the Otter and his mother. The narrator claims that the short features "the first film ever taken of an otter swimming underwater."

A wildlife film with a difference: it has A Message for any humans in the house. "The squirrel in the tree, the fox below, the birds, insects, all know that a time of plenty will not last forever". Austerity-stricken wartime viewers can learn from their economical feeding habits. An entertaining hybrid of public information and natural history from the makers of wildlife series Secrets of Life. Released in the BFI boxset Ration Books and Rabbit Pies: Films from the Home Front.

A Secrets of Life short.

In this dramatized warning to young women of the risks of venereal disease, Betty, a shop girl, pays a severe price for just one 'slip'.

Part two of two teaching films about human anatomy which is devoted to the action of the skeletal muscles in producing movement of the bones at the joints of the human skeleton. It uses live action and animated medical illustrations as well as an actual skeleton with commentary. A man, naked to the waist, also demonstrates the relevant physical processes such as respiration.

A Secrets of Life short.

A retired Major's efforts to hone his golf skills are thwarted by the diminutive but defiant common daisy.

A film based on a story by Leo Tolstoy about a cabinet maker, his wife and an angel punished by God.

This film shows how and why the animals which inhabit a pond are dependent one on another for their survival. We see the minnow in pursuit of water fleas and a stickleback seeking worms to satisfy his need of fuel. Carbon-dioxide, we are reminded, is essential for the growth of the green plants and the oxygen they release for the breathing of the animal population of the pond.

In Australia, five children pursue horse thieves through the mountains.

Story of young boy and girl who help aircraft designer to outwit gang of spies trying to steal secret plans.

Poetic tribute to Mrs Turner's vegetable growing prowess, plus the delights of "wartime steaks".

The lecturer shows a microcinematographic sequence of spirochaetes and drawings of the gonoccus (the bacteria responsible for syphilis and gonorrhea). He then turns to an easel and begins to draw 'the road of health'; the cartoon takes this up in magic drawing, in a style that is highly reminiscent of the 'Giro the Germ' series made for the Health and Cleanliness Council a few years before.

The film shows speeded-up germination of the seed to form roots and shoot, at whose base the leaves later form a bulb. The flower produces pollen grains (shown much magnified), which are transferred by insects to the stigmas for fertilization of seeds inside the ovary.

This documentary starts with the theory as proposed by John Dalton in 1808, and outlines the progress made during the nineteenth century bringing in Faraday's early experiments in electrolysis, Mendeleeff's Periodic Table, and ending with ideas of the size of molecules and atoms then current. (Part 1 of 6)

Part of the Junior Biology series, this study of pin mould is aided by diagrammatic, time-lapse, and microscopic footage.