incinerator for the disposal of the carcases was built, and outside the yard 

 a brick building to serve as further laboratory accommodation. 



From this time on as necessity arose small additions were made, 

 first a building for the preparation of vaccine lymph, then some quarters 

 for the staff engaged in the rinderpest work, later some stables and more 

 quarters ; but always the additions were of a temporary nature and 

 chiefly constructed from such old wood and iron as was obtainable from 

 buildings pulled down during the war, so by the end of the year 1905 the 

 station had already grown to some size, though it was merely a hetero- 

 geneous collection of old wood and iron buildings ; most of them of a 

 very unsuitable nature for scientific work. 



But an important change had in the meantime taken place in the 

 administrative control of the laboratory. Until the conclusion of the 

 war in the year 1902, both the laboratory and the rinderpest station were 

 a subordinate branch of the Public Health Department, but with the 

 establishment of a Department of Agriculture under the direction of 

 Mr. P. B. Smith, they were both transferred to his Department, and the 

 laboratory which had hitherto received but half-hearted support as a merely 

 temporary institution, now became organised as the Veterinary Bacterio- 

 logical Division of the Department of Agriculture, and from this time 

 onward a steady policy of progress has been pursued. 



The preparation of rinderpest serum was continued until in 1903 

 the country was considered free from the disease ; it was then thought 

 advisable to close down the serum depot, as the keeping of infected animals 

 at a place where the facilities for segregation were by no means perfect 

 created a quite unnecessary risk of starting a new outbreak in the 

 immediate neighbourhood of the laboratory. 



Meanwhile at the close of the war, importations of stock on a large 

 scale had begun, not only from neighbouring Colonies and States in 

 South Africa, but also from oversea; and due to these unrestricted 

 importations, both during the war and after, many diseases before not 

 known in the Transvaal, were introduced, and amongst them a new 

 disease of cattle, which at one time seemed as if it would rival rinderpest 

 in destruction and sweep off the last head of cattle that rinderpest and 

 the war had left. The history of the introduction of East Coast fever, 

 and the methods taken to combat it are now a matter of history, but the 

 Transvaal farmer has need to congratulate the Department of Agricul- 

 ture on its foresight in establishing a laboratory which was ready at once 

 to take up research into the nature of the disease and so arrive at the 

 best means of attacking it and preventing its spread. 



Prom the first inception of the laboratory horse-sickness, which is 

 so pecuharly a disease of South Africa, and which annually takes so heavy 

 a toll of the horses and mules of this country, was naturally studied, but 

 at first the facilities were scanty and money lacking. As, however, with a 



