24 NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY OF DUBLIN. 



Mr. J. J. La lor offered some observations dTan original nature upon 

 the manners and habits of the oyster. 



Dr. Samuel Hewitt was balloted for, and unanimously elected a 

 Member of the Society. 



FEBRUARY 2, 1870. 

 Richard Palmer Williams, Esq., "Vice-President, in the Chair. 



The Minutes of the previous Meeting having been read, compared, 

 and signed, donations announced, and thanks voted, 



Dr. Arthur Wynne Poot read the following communication : — 



On Goitre in Animals. 



I have lately had an opportunity of seeing a goitre in a bitch pup of 

 the black and tan terrier breed, and it occurred to me that it might not 

 be uninteresting to bring the animal under the notice of the Natural 

 History Society, and to make a few remarks upon the subject of goitre 

 in the lower animals. I do not bring the case forward as a rare or 

 even as a novel circumstance; but it suggests various considerations, 

 which I venture to think are not altogether unworthy of the notice of 

 this Society. Observations upon animals in health are alwaj^s accept- 

 able to naturalists, and I can hardly be mistaken in supposing that 

 observations upon the subject of the diseases of animals would also be 

 welcome to them, since no one can fail to be aware of the great and 

 increasing value attached to comparative pathology in the present day. 

 The visitation of the Cattle Plague in 1865-66, has given a surprising 

 impulse to this branch of science, and has caused it to assume an im- 

 portance quite new to it in England. It would be difficult to exagge- 

 rate the value of the study of the diseases of animals ; it may be looked 

 at from a commercial or from a national point of view, according as it 

 tends to affect a valuable source of income, or conduces to the mainte- 

 nance of the public health ; or even a more personal view may be taken 

 of the subject, if we consider for a moment the question of the diseases 

 which originate in animals, and wbich are communicable to man, such 

 as favus, glanders, hydrophobia, and the trichina disease. A further 

 argument in favour of the importance of inquiring into the diseases of 

 animals is the fact, that the phenomena of disease in the simpler forms 

 of the creation, serve to elucidate the phenomena of disease in man; 

 and as the problems of physiology and of structural anatomy are best 

 studied in the lower and simpler forms of animal life, so also are many 

 of the morbid processes which affect the existence of man himself. 



On the 24th November, 1869, a young bitch pup, of the black and 

 tan terrier breed, was shown me with a bilobular swelling at the root 

 of the neck, in the situation of the thyroid glands ; this swelling had 

 been noticed soon after birth, and had been increasing in size up to the 

 time when I saw it. There had been three pups in the litter, and 



