the disease was finally stamped out in Great Britain, 1,605 diseased cattle and 21,092 in-contact cattle were slaughtered, the cost in compensation being £357,626. "That was dealing with the disease by the stamping-out method, by slaughter. I would like to compare these results with what took place in the Transvaal after the war, and during the restocking operations, both of which resulted in pleuro-pneumonia being disseminated. The country could not afford to stamp the disease out by wholesale slaughter; but, in addition to the financial difficulty, one would not have been justified in advising it for a country where most of the farm work and local transport has to be carried on by oxen, and where the animal herds had already been reduced to an almost impossible number, owing to a long war coming on the top of the rinderpest. The Veterinary Department advised that pleuro-pneumonia be dealt with by slaughter of the affected, and compulsory inoculation of contact animals with a pure virus. . . . From May 1903 to June 1904, 256 outbreaks of the disease were dealt with in the above way; 741 affected animals died or were slaughtered, and 9,000 in-contact animals were inoculated. By the method of slaughtering contacts, the compensation payable would have been about £135,000. In the following year (1904-5) the results of inoculation became apparent, as only 13 outbreaks occurred, and the number of in-contacts which had to be inoculated fell to 3,109."

With regard to tetanus, he said: "There are regions, all over the world, where the soil is almost grossly infected with the spores of the tetanus bacillus; and there are farms which are particularly infected with this microbe, which lives in the soil. If the animals in these districts are the subjects of accidental wounds, or those produced by surgical operations, a large number of them

die of tetanus. In the ordinary course of stock-breeding, it is necessary to operate annually on a large number of farm animals; for example, most young males have to be castrated. Some regions are so badly infected that it is almost a certainty that an animal, with a wound in a part of its body which is likely to come into contact with the soil, will take tetanus, and probably die. In 1897 Professor Nocard demonstrated, by experiments on about 30 horses, that tetanus could not be produced in them by inoculation of virus, provided they had received a dose of antitoxic serum not later than three or four days after they had been inoculated with the virus. Basing his ideas for the prevention of tetanus on these experimental observations, he furnished several veterinary surgeons, practising in infected districts, with quantities of serum, doses of which were to be injected into animals before the performance of surgical operations, and into those which had received accidental wounds. Records of the results were furnished in connection with 2,705 animals. In 2,300 cases serum was administered immediately after an operation; and no death from tetanus occurred in these animals. Of the remainder, 400 received serum from one to four days or more after an accidental wound on dangerous parts (that is, parts of the body near the soil). Only one case of tetanus occurred in this lot of animals, and it ended by recovery. These observations were purposely made in tetanus-infected districts at the request of veterinary surgeons, who annually lost numerous patients from tetanus; and, during the period of observation, 259 cases of tetanus were observed in untreated animals, so that there could be no doubt that the tetanus spore was present in an active condition at the time of the observations. As a result of these observations, the prevention of tetanus by serum has been successfully

adopted all over the world; and there are many observations from individual practitioners, which testify further to the efficacy of this method of prevention." Asked what part of England he would call a "tetanus-infected district," he said that there were several farms in England which were pretty bad; but he had more in his mind parts of India. Round about Bombay, and round about Calcutta, it was exceedingly dangerous to do an operation. on an animal, especially about the lower parts of the body.

With regard to anthrax, he said that a method of preventive inoculation, which was effective for all commercial purposes, was devised by Pasteur. Within the last two or three years, the original method had been somewhat modified. He did not think the modifications were of any great importance. He quoted Chamberland's paper, in the Annals of the Pasteur Institute, 1887, showing that the death-rate had been reduced from 10 per cent. of the whole stock, on farms attacked, to 0.91 per cent. "Statistics collected in Hungary, on over 11 millions of inoculated animals, show that the results have been practically the same as in France. They talk of farms where the loss, which was 10 per cent., has been reduced to under 1 per cent."

With regard to blackquarter, he said that the method of Arloing, Cornevin, and Thomas, and its modifications, had given most excellent results in various parts of the world. "The statistics available deal with hundreds of thousands of animals. A very large number have been treated by this method, and may therefore be accepted as satisfactory evidence of its efficacy. They show that, by this protective method, the death-rate from blackquarter in badly infected districts has been reduced, in the inoculated, as much as 14 per cent, in some cases; and,

although the actual reduction of the death-rate varies in different districts, it is always less in those animals which have been inoculated-that is to say, in infected districts. There seems, moreover, great probability of the death-rate being further reduced by improvements in the method."

With regard to swine erysipelas, he said that a serum treatment had been very successfully used in practice. "Not only has this serum decidedly curative effects on sick animals treated with it in the early stages, but a pig-owner can render his whole herd of animals immune by giving them a mild attack of the disease, which can be accomplished by injecting them simultaneously with the culture of the causal microbe, and a dose of protective serum. . . . The statistics from Hungary show that on 4,000,000 observations the death-rate was reduced in inoculated animals to 1.6 per cent.; whereas in the noninoculated it amounted to about 20 per cent. . . . In Eastern Prussia, there were issued, in 1898, records of observations on 22,161 pigs, 3,831 of which were made on farms already infected at the time of the inoculation; the disease had already broken out on these farms. In all of the latter, the disease ceased to spread after protective inoculation, while 58 per cent. of the actually sick pigs which were treated with serum recovered. In Würtemburg, nearly 18,000 pigs in infected districts were inoculated; of these only 6 afterwards died of the disease, whereas 3,254 of their companions, which were not inoculated, died of swine erysipelas."

Mr. Stockman went on to speak of the tropical diseases of animals. "Already it has been found possible to give mules a high degree of immunity against South African horse-sickness, a seasonal disease which, in some parts of Africa, annihilates practically every horse in a district,

and makes the settlement of these districts almost impossible. Advances have also been made in the prevention of such diseases as red-water, heart-water, and bluetongue. . . . It is absolutely necessary, for the grading up and development of stock in these more or less new countries like South Africa, that pedigree-animals should be imported from the most highly developed herds or flocks in Europe. When these high-priced animals are imported for this purpose and placed on the pastures, it has unfortunately been found that from 50 to 90 per cent, die of the above-mentioned diseases before much good can be derived from their introduction. The expense on this account becomes so enormous as to make it financially impossible for most farmers to import. . . . I have been informed by a responsible colonist from Southern Nigeria that the indigenous diseases of the country have practically annihilated domestic animals, which are necessary for the building up of a community. It is represented that transport work by draught animals is practically impossible. It is said that owing to the absence of milchanimals the native women have to suckle their children for a period of two years, and that the growth of population is thereby greatly interfered with. It is further stated that the infant mortality in the country is great, and that this is largely attributed to the absence of milk. I do not think that any remedy for this reported state of affairs can be found, except by experimental researches conducted with a view of getting some method of preventing mortality amongst the animals of the farm, the domesticated animals." Such experiments were now going on in the Board of Agriculture Laboratories.

With regard to tubercle and glanders, Mr. Stockman pointed out that these two diseases were communicable to human beings. "One of the most dangerous character