Pkesident's Address. 7 



rural population the inestimable value to themselves, and to their 

 pastoral and agricultural undertakings, of scientific research (costly 

 and slow as it necessarily is, and always must be), has been a work 

 of time, and has required many object-lessons. 



Let me record some of the achievements of science, in this one 

 matter of immunisation against disease, in the course of the last 

 ten or twelve years. A practical and effectual means of stamping 

 out rinderpest, and of immunising cattle which have been 

 exposed to infection, has been fonnd. Mules can be and are 

 effectually immunised against horse-sickness, and there are good 

 hopes of the early discovery of a practical method of immunising 

 horses against that disease. Although it has not been as yet 

 found possible to immunise stock, artificially, against East Coast 

 fever, the investigations which have been made into that disease 

 have made it possible to recommend precautions, which have proved 

 successful, for preventing the disease from making its appearance on 

 a farm, and have demonstrated the possibility of clearing infected 

 areas. A practical method of vaccination against biliary fever, 

 which in donkeys, mules and horses is stated to be a success, has 

 been discovered. The possibility of producing a serum which is 

 stated to have a strong preventive action in cases of heartwater in 

 cattle, sheep, and goats, has been demonstrated. Methods of 

 inoculation against blue-tongue in sheep, which are likely to prove 

 to be of considerable practical value, have been discovered. It is 

 scarcely necessary that I should refer to the wide-spread confidence 

 which is felt, by those interested in pastoral pursuits, in the vaccines 

 against anthrax, quarter-evil. Cape red-water, and lung-sickness, 

 which are issued from the various Government laboratories. 



As regards diseases and insect pests of plants, the plague of the 

 Dorthesia insect, which twenty years ago threatened to extinguish 

 the cultivation of oranges in the Cape Colony, and led to the destruc- 

 tion of great numbers of blackwood trees, and to the abandonment 

 of that beautiful tree for street planting, was stopped in 1892 

 by the introduction of the Vedalia ladybird. The discovery of 

 this remedy was due to the scientific study of insects. Fi'uit trees 

 infected with scale insect can now be safely fumigated with hydro- 

 cyanic acid gas. This remedy is essentially the outcome of scientific 

 enquiry. The continued cultivation of the vine, which was 

 giavely threatened by the Phylloxera, has been made possible by the 

 introduction of the method of grafting on "American stocks." This 

 method, which is simple, has been developed by means of 

 an infinite amount of close study and by innumerable scientifically 

 conducted experiments. Study of the locust problem has shown 

 how the great swarms of voetgangers, which cause such enormous 

 destruction of crops, and even of grass, can be annihilated easily, 

 and at relatively slight expense, by the adoption of a method dis- 

 covered and developed in this country. The entomologist, the 



