10 DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



sons or forms of specific virus, just as in the case of other livinji' entities 

 whose reproduction is undoubted. Spontaneous veneration — tin- tlu'ory 

 otdeveh)i)nieut hvan aeei<U'ntal coliesion and vivifying- oi' inert matter — 

 ably as it lias been defended up to the present day, is fast passing into 

 oblivion. We are, and must probably remain, in ignorance of that final 

 cause which once molded and gave life to all that is living. All that 

 is living, however, owes that life to parents, ever since the globe 43ecame 

 inhabited; and there are no facts to iiulicatc that one form of living mat- 

 ter grew out of another, and a totally different, form, and that there were 

 successive stages in the creation of animals or parts of animals. Animal 

 poisons are only known to us, it is true, as parts of animals. They are 

 undistinguishable, except from the results produced by them on the 

 creatures they infest, and yet they are as foreign to them as the count- 

 less parasites that are only known to us as abiding in the living tissues of 

 living beings. Indeed animal poisons may be regarded as i)arasitic pro- 

 ductions, and their difference from the more apparent types of organized 

 entities may be due more to imperfect means of observation than to act- 

 ual diversity. 



Eftbrts are indeed being made to demonstrate the vegetable origin of 

 many animal poisons, and it is supposed by some that crytogamic plants, 

 fuugi, &c., not only approach more the nature of many forms of specific 

 virus, but actually constitute the contagium or active principle which 

 breeds and propagates in the development of small-pox, cholera, the 

 plagues of the lower animals, &c. There is one grave objection to all 

 that has yet been done in this interesting field of inquiry. The vegeta- 

 ble forms into which poisons are said to pullulate have not, in a single 

 instance, been successfully emploj^ed iu the reproduction of the diseases 

 they have been supposed to generate. 



Delafond* quotes Aristotle, who wrote his work on the History of 

 Animals three hundred and fifty-four years before Christ, iu proof of 

 cattle being then known to suffer from a disease of the lungs. " The 

 cattle," he says, "which live iu herds are subject to a malady, during 

 which the breathing becomes hot and frequent. The ears droop, and 

 they cannot eat. They die rapidly, and on opening them the lungs are 

 found spoiled."' 



in the collection of extracts and writings of the Greek veterinarians 

 made by order of the Emperor Constantine, descriptions of the lung 

 diseases of cattle are given Avhich may lead us to infer the prevalence 

 even then of the lung plague.t 



It would l>e simply waste of time to discuss the merits of unsatisfac- 

 tory hints — for tliey are not records — which have been traced in the 

 writings of Livy, Vegetius, Sylvius Italicus, Columella, Virgil, ami 



*Tn>it<^ snr In ^lalinlif ilc Poitriiio dii Gros T^c^t.ul, cruinue sons 1o noiii do Poripiu'u. 

 iiionie C'oiitii;ii»'iisc, [cir (). ]>il;itoiiil, I'aii.s, 1814. 



tGcupoiiicoiuni, sen dc re Rustica, Lib. XX — «(lit((l by Peter NfcilliMiii, Ciunbridgo, 

 17U4— Quoted by .Saubery. 



