46 MAX HENRY. 
There is thus very sufficient evidence that Australian 
wool is remarkably free from Anthrax, and it is of import- 
ance to know to what extent such freedom is associated 
with freedom from the disease in stock, or is due to the 
discrimination in the marketing of wool from infected and 
possibly infected animals. To the uninitiated, a perusal of 
the daily press of this State during the last few years, © 
would have conveyed the opinion that Anthrax was a 
serious and prevalent plague of live stock in New South 
Wales and that such an impression has been produced is 
not to be doubted. This attitude towards Anthrax is 
largely the result of the experience of past times, and in 
order to show the change that has been brought about, it 
is desirable to consider the history of the disease in this 
country. 
The first outbreak recorded appears to have occurred at 
Leppington near Liverpool, N.S.W., according to W. M. 
Hamlet. (Intercolonial Medical Congress 1889). 
In 1851 a commission of enquiry was appointed in New 
South Wales, John Stewart being the veterinarian of the 
‘Commission, and it was found that the disease existed on 
the Sydney side of the Blue Mountains. 
By 1859 it appeared to have been introduced to the 
Lachlan, Castlereagh, and Liverpool Plains Districts, and 
according to the Report of the Anthrax Board 1889, in 
1866 it had been recorded on the Darling Downs in Queens- 
land, and by 1876-7 on the Western District of Victoria. 
Gordon writing in 1868 to Mitchell stated that some ten 
or fifteen years since the disease was almost ruinous in the 
districts immediately south of the Liverpool Plains and in 
the Orange and Wellington Districts (N.S.W.), and further 
“‘we find it to have existed in a very virulent form in the 
country lying between the Razorback and Bargo in County 
, Oamden, N.S.W.”’ 

