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attained by an expenditure of time, money, patience, and some 

 little personal risk. And this would be a great gain, because 

 it was the question of questions in regard to the settlement of 

 the origin of hydatid disease. He also thought that a large 

 number of ova obtained from the Taenia in this colony should 

 be sent to England for experiment in the same direction. He 

 was afraid that he had made a mistake in saying " to England," 

 because if a scientific man caused the same amount of pain to 

 animals, with a view of discovering something that would tend 

 to the saving of human life, as resulted from many so-called 

 sports, he would stand a good chance of seeing the inside of 

 one of Her Majesty's prisons. These ova should be sent to 

 some place where the physiologist and biologist were not 

 watched by the policeman while they were making their experi- 

 ments. Physiology was not exactly dead in England, but it 

 was seriously hindered in its investigations by the senti- 

 mentality of old women of both sexes. While he could 

 bear testimony to the industry that had characterized Dr. 

 Thomas in the collection of his statistics, he could not agree 

 with some of the conclusions that he had drawn. A leading 

 proposition in the paper was that there are four factors 

 which regulated the spread of hydatid disease in any country — 

 (1) the number of dogs in proportion to the population 

 of the country; (2) the number of sheep and oxen in the 

 country ; (3) the opportunities that existed for the dogs to 

 swallow the eggs bred in the sheep ; (4) the frequency with 

 which the dog devoured the organs of infected sheep containing 

 hydatids. As far as Australia was concerned the two last 

 factors w^ould be equal in all the colonies, and the sheep in one 

 colony would be just as liable to get the disease as any other, 

 so that they were reduced to the other two factors. Although 

 there was only one series of figures the conclusions suggested 

 were different from those drawn by Dr. Thomas. In Victoria, 

 the number of dogs during the seven years dealt with remained 

 about stationary, viz., one dog to every twenty of the inhabi- 

 tants, but the deaths from hydatids had enormously increased. 

 Erom 1872 to 1877 the number of deaths was 960, but in the 

 next five years they had increased to 1,150. Of course there 

 had been some slight increase in the population, which should 

 be taken into consideration ; but that should not add more than 

 three or four deaths to the number, but instead of that they 

 had an annual average death-rate of 231 against 182. Then, 

 as to the other factor, the statistics seemed to prove that the 

 greater the number of sheep and oxen the less hydatids. New 

 South Wales had the most stock, but was only fifth on the list 

 of mortality from hydatid disease; while Victoria, with the 

 least stock, had in proportion to her population the highest 



