io6 



medical men, (including Dr. Klein, whose reputation 

 as a bacteriologist needs no advertisement), have each 

 of them made a distinct statement that egg increases 

 the virulence of certain septic bacilli which attack 

 birds. For this statement, arrived at by independent 

 observations and constructive experiment on the part 

 of all three, the}^ would appear to have their reasons. 

 Those who are curious in the matter can consult their 

 various writings. It might strike an ordinary person 

 that such a statement, coming as it does from men of 

 their profession, two of whom at least have had a very 

 considerable " practical experience " of bird keeping, 

 was at any rate worthy of some time and trouble 

 spent in its rational consideration ; and the same 

 ordinary person might well be excused if he imagined 

 that the reasons must have been strong to have com- 

 pelled a statement on their part which so radically 

 knocks the bottom out of those traditionary usages, 

 which they themselves, like other people, had followed 

 for years. It would however seem that the every day 

 person would be quite wrong in such an opinion. Dr. 

 Butler, (Doctor of Philosophy), steps in and effectually 

 puts him right, and it is his valuable and timely con- 

 tribution to medical science to which we now desire 

 to pay a measure of critical attention. 



The ordinary person to whom allusion has been 

 made, with just his ordinary hum-drum common sense, 

 would naturally jump to the conclusion that before 

 attempting to dogmatize on the causation of a disease 

 it is at least desirable to know what disease one is 

 actually discussing. In the plentitude of his simple- 

 mindedness, he would think it unfortunate on the part 

 of a critic that he should betray such an ignorance of 

 the very A of the alphabet as to fix on a disease, for 

 his illustration, which up to the present would appear 

 never to have been found in birds, and then to gravely 

 assert that it is the presence or absence of egg in 

 the food which determines the freedom or other 



