132 DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



Duvaine, De Bary, and many more. Apart from the views enunciated and slender facts 

 recorded, it seems to me essential to the completion of the work undertaken to attempt 

 some means whereby it may be shown whether the periodic, or Texas, fever and the lung- 

 plague did owe their origin, as alleged by the New York commissioners for the first and 

 Hallier and Weiss for the second, to a peculiar cryptogamic vegetation. When in the 

 West last summer I had occasion to recommend an investigation of the causes of the 

 prevailing cattle fever in the South; and, on its being resolved that I should visit Texas 

 for the purposes of this inquiry, I obtained the assent of the Commissioner of Agriculture 

 to the selection of Mr. H. W. Ravenel, of Aiken, South Carolina, so well known as an 

 enthusiastic and reliable observer and collector in the field of cryptogamic botany, to 

 accompany me. 



At the same time Dr. J. S. Billings and Dr. E. Curtis, whose attention has been 

 specially directed to the cryptogamic origin of disease, offered to cooperate with me, if I 

 would supply material for satisfactory experiments regarding the two diseases named. By 

 a favorable arrangement between the Agricultural and Army Medical Departments these 

 reports are now enriched by observations of the most reliable and interesting description. 



JOHN GAMGEE, M. D. 

 Hon. HORACE CAPRON, 



Commissioner of Agriculture. 



