The Menace of Anthrax. 



675 



fined 500 guineas for not notifying foot and mouth disease among 

 their sheep and moving tliem on the main road. This message has 

 its own significance to stock owners in the Union, where the penalties 

 prescribed and inflicted are smaller, yet where the industry at stake 

 is of vital importance to the country. It is not, however, the fear of 

 the law which is likely to rid the country of anthrax, but the whole- 

 hearted co-operation of stock owners in the proper disposal of infected 

 carcasses, which has been proved to be the most important factor in 

 arresting the spread of tlie disease. It is regrettable but true that in 

 our experience the stock-owning community appear to be indifferent 

 to the great danger in carelessly handling anthrax carcasses. Yet 

 the effective eradication of the disease depends more upon the efforts 

 of the individual farmer than upon any action which can be taken by 

 this Department, and so long as this indifference on the part of stock 

 owners to their legal and moral obligation exists we run the grave 

 risks attending the disease. We repeat, therefore, that anthrax is an 

 ever-present danger and fraught with greater possibilities for evil 

 tlmn any of the other animal diseases which beset our land, and it is 

 the bounden duty of every true citizen of South Africa to do his share, 

 however irksome it may be, in freeing the country of this plague. 



Herd of Pedigree Africanders. 



The Union's Timber Resources. 



The Forest Department states that the more accessible forests 

 of the Union will in the next ten or fifteen years have been more or 

 less worked over and the supplies of virgin timber extracted. After 

 that the yield from the indigenous forests can be expected to drop 

 very considerably, probably to a half of the present output. 



It is difficult, of course, to forecast how the country will be 

 opened up in the meantime, and it is just possible that some of the 

 forests, now remote, may become accessible, and thus enable the 

 present output to be maintained for a further period of years. On 

 the other hand, the plantations of exotic species may be expected to 

 develop and the output from them can be relied upon to increase 

 steadily. At present, however, and for some years yet, these planta- 

 tions will yield only preliminary thinnings in the shape of mining 

 timber, poles, fuel, etc., but as they grow older a regular and 

 gradunllv increasing amount of saw-timber will be produced. 



