INCIDENCE OF ANTHRAX IN STOCK IN AUSTRALIA. 5D 
exactly with the area in which Anthrax occurred during 
the years 1909 to 1921. 
In Queensland the disease is officially declared to be non- 
existent, and all the evidence available goes to support 
this view. Moreover, it has already been shown that the 
continuous belt running through Victoria and New South 
Wales completely disappears some distance before the 
Queensland Border is reached, and Norris giving evidence 
before the British Departmental Committee on Anthrax in 
1918, reported that it had never occurred in Queensland. 
Against this, however, Mitchell in his book quotes P. R. 
Gordon, late Chief Inspector of Stock, Queensland, as 
reporting Anthrax on the Darling Downs in 1868, particu- 
larly on Dunmore and Cecil Plains, and also on the New 
South Wales Border and in Maranda. 
In 1877, however, Gordon writing to Mitchell said, *‘ at 
the time of my first report, the disease was very rife in 
this colony. . . . we hear little of it now except occasion- 
ally odd instances and these confined to . . . rich soils in 
spots on Darling Downs and Maranda districts.’? Such a 
history if taken on its face value is almost unbelievable. 
There is not on record, so far as cau be found, any instance 
of a district or country in which ten years after Anthrax 
is reported to be very rife it has practically disappeared 
and is not again recorded, although forty years have passed 
since the last record. Certainly Anthrax has, if the reports 
can be trusted, disappeared in an equally complete fashion 
from many districts in New South Wales, but nowhere with 
such rapidity, and naturally an impression of doubt is left 
as to whether Anthrax ever existed in Queensland. In 
South Australia the disease is practically unknown, and 
Western Australia is declared at the present time to be free, 
and certainly if Anthrax exists there at all it must be very 
localised and of little importance. According to the Pro- 
