16 Address of the President. 



mediate inten'uption of laws. We are bound to study these 

 causes and their variations, both as warnings and to gain 

 the means if possible to anticipate them. This we are 

 authorised by every means in our power to do, and in de- 

 pendence on His will to try to avert these natural evils. In 

 such seasons as the past and present, the animal frame, as 

 well as the vegetable structure, are less able to resist those 

 mysterious seeds of disease, which are ready to take advan- 

 tage of any subject most suitable for their development and 

 least capable of resistance ; and after the indiscretion, fool- 

 hardiness, and senseless covetousness of some, with the little 

 care that has been taken to restrain the intermixture of 

 animals by public markets and roads, the evasion of the 

 sanitary measures attempted to be imposed, it is not remark- 

 able that these diseases should spread. If you will for a 

 moment think of what we in common language call 

 " Scent," no one can doubt how easily disease can be carried. 

 See how far off in a favourable day a pointer will wind his 

 game. See a good retriever follow the windings of a wounded 

 bird long after it has passed. See a pack of fox hounds 

 puzzle out a " scent" over the hardest road or dryest ploughed 

 land, and when a long grassy pasture is gained (the scent 

 clinging to the roughness) they go away breast high with no 

 time even to give tongue : or in a cold hoar fi'ost the fact 

 that an animal has passed over the ground is uncertainly 

 and slowly indicated, but the moment the sun has acted, 

 the particles are loosened and the scent picked strongly 

 up. Truly the particles are most subtle, but we cannot 

 doubt their i^resence, and that they can be carried. 



What the effect minute fungi have upon the animal 

 frame has not been sufficiently attended to. The excess 

 of them is extraneous and cannot be wholesome. Cattle 

 could not eat the turnip leaves this year without consum- 

 ino- myriads of the white fungus. I did not think it would 

 be wholesome, and did not feed with them. Our medical 

 friends and members know very well the effect of Ergot. A 

 species of this fungus is in some years very common upon 



