iio'tm. 195 



able to undertake the survey which entails the co-ordination and co- 

 operation of those of its Divisions concerned, and an endeavour is 

 being made to commence operations immediately. 



Retirement of the Principal Veterinary Ofl&cer. 



Mr. C. K Gray, M.E.C.Y.S., the Principal Veterinary Officer 

 for the Union, is now on leave of absence and will retire from the 

 Public Service on the 9th May, 1921. Son of the Controller of Tele- 

 graphs of the General Post Office, Edinburgh, Mr. Gray was born 

 and educated in Scotland, and in 1879 entered the Scottish Postal 

 Telegraph Service, in which he spent seven years. He subsequently 

 entered the Royal (Dick) Veterinary College, Edinburgh, and after 

 qualifying and spending some time in practice in the Midlands went 

 to the United States, where he practised for several years as a 

 veterinary surgeon. 



Mr. Gray came to South Africa in 1895, and finding no suitable 

 opening in a veterinary capacity joined the Phodesian Telegraph 

 Service, remaining in it until the rinderpest invasion of 1896 when, 

 on the recommendation of Dr. Hutcheon, then Chief Veterinary 

 Surgeon for the Cape Colony, he was employed by the Chartered 

 Company to investigate the disease, the subsequent operations under- 

 taken for its eradication being carried out on his recommendations. 

 But the Matabele rebellion put a stop, unfortunately, to these opera- 

 tions, and Mr. Gray served in the ensuing campaign, and at the close 

 of the war again took up work with the Ehodesian Telegraph Service. 

 Shortly afterwards, however, he was commissioned by the Chartered 

 Company to acquaint himself with the new method of dealing with 

 rinderpest discovered by Professor Koch, and upon completion thereof 

 was employed in Phodesia in a veterinary capacity. Further service 

 in connection with rinderpest was rendered by Mr. Gray in 1897, 

 when he was lent to the Native Affairs Department of the Cape Colony 

 for that purpose. From then onwards he was placed in charge of, 

 and was mainly responsible in building up, the Rhodesian Veterinary 

 Division. 



Mr. Gray's association with our veterinary service dates from 

 April, 1905, when he accepted the appointment of Principal 

 Veterinary Officer for the Transvaal. He served in this capacity 

 until Union, when he was appointed to the post which he is now 

 relinquishing. 



Mr. Gray was called upon to perform many arduous and exacting 

 duties connected with his important office, and his name will be 

 closely associated with the control of the live stock pests of South 

 Africa during an important stage of the country's development. Of 

 his special services, we may mention his last, when he directed the 

 operations of the Rinderpest Expedition sent to German East Africa 

 in 1917 by the joint administrations of the South African Govern- 

 ments. The object of the expedition was to check the southward 

 spread of rinderpest, a task of considerable difficulty owing to the 

 East African campaign then in progress. The efforts of the expedi- 

 tion were crowned with success and the southward trend of the 

 disease checked, but it meant the inoculation of close on one hundred 

 thousand head of cattle, in a zone of country practically unexplored, 

 extending from Lake Nyasa to Lake Tanganyika. 



