PACHYDERM ATA 411 



neither is there any reward of reputation or gain for pursuing 

 any investigation that would bring pork and beef packers into 

 disrepute. I myself could not get a pig's kidney or beefs 

 liver in our city market, because I made investigations in some 

 Texas cattle (being cut up in our market), which damaged 

 their sale a few years ago." In a third letter Dr Fletcher 

 tells me that greater facilities for examining the carcases of 

 hogs had since been accorded him through the liberality of 

 a Liverpool firm of pork-packers, who had already killed 75,000 

 hogs during the summer season, i.e. up to the date of the first 

 week in July. In hot weather the slaughtering is conducted 

 in ice-houses. Prof. Fletcher's views receive confirmation from 

 the statements made by Dr Morris, who speaks of the pigs as 

 dying from some mysterious disease, and thinks that the worms 

 may be the cause of the porcine mortality. Writing to the 

 President of the London Microscopical Society from Sydney 

 (July 12th, 1871), Dr Morris says: "It is just possible that 

 some pigs may survive the irritation such a swarm of young 

 worms must set up ; others, again, may die from peritonitis, 

 hence the sudden deaths amongst the pigs." I think Dr 

 Morris' view is perfectly correct, but whether it be so or not, it 

 is (as observed by me in ' Nature ') interesting to notice the 

 remarkable correspondency of the conclusions arrived at by Drs 

 Fletcher and Morris independently. It will probably not be 

 difficult to ascertain hereafter whether or not the maladies 

 respectively termed "hog cholera" and "mysterious disease" 

 are one and the same disorder, but whatever happens in this 

 respect, it is now quite clear that this parasite, hitherto little 

 regarded, and for many years past persistently overlooked, is 

 extraordinarily prevalent in the United States, and, perhaps, 

 equally so in Australia ; it being further evident that its presence 

 in the flesh of swine is capable of producing both disease 

 and death. The statement of the worthy American farmer that 

 the swallowing of infested flesh by pigs does not necessarily 

 involve the pig- eating hog in a bad attack of the so-called 

 " cholera disease " requires to be further tested, and it also 

 remains to be proven whether or not the Stephanurus be capable 

 of passing through all its developmental changes from the egg 

 to the adult form within the body of the bearer without having 

 at some time or other gained access to the outer world. The 

 comparatively large size of the ova, which I find to be about 3 ~ // , 

 or more than four times the size of Trichina-eggs, is not with- 



