PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 6 



not rest until the method had had a fair trial. The stake 

 at issue is enormous. I know of one sheep station where, 

 in January of this year, 25,000 rabbits were taken in the 

 pit traps along the wire fences ; and of another where 

 10,000 may be found as a solid barrier dead around the 

 poisoned water, and through which barrier lanes have to be 

 made for their successors to pass to tbe poison and a similar 

 fate. Olearly, in face of such facts as these, incessant 

 war must be made against the enemy — or we must abandon 

 the country. My advice to the people is to relax no effort. 

 Let the wire-netting and other means be proceeded with 

 as if no microbe experiments were going on, for the disease 

 methods will never supplant the ordinary methods. At 

 best they are no more than poisons, living poisons if you 

 will, but still poisons. They may be but another weapon 

 against the enemy ; the old weapons will still be needed. 



The Danysz Hat-virus Experiments.— How uncertain the 

 effects of microbes are is well exemplified by the results 

 obtained with the microbe found by Dr. Danysz to be 

 effective in destroying rats. In order to destroy rats and 

 thus to combat plague, the Board of Health had on three 

 occasions imported the virus and tried it without success, 

 when the arrival of Dr. Danysz himself seemed a good 

 opportunity to test the virus definitively. Dr. Danysz 

 himself gave every assistance and exalted to the requisite 

 degree of virulence the microbe which he had himself 

 imported, so that the conditions could not have been more 

 favourable for a favourable result. Nevertheless, here 

 the virus was not successful. It evidently did not set up 

 an epizootic of any magnitude. The results seemed to 

 indicate a rapid loss of virulence, which must be obviated 

 if this virus is to be of practical utility for rat destruction 

 and so we must go on still in the old way — remove their 

 food supplies, afford them no shelter, catch and kill or 



