890 The American Naturalist, [October, 
orf,rans, and gastro-intestinal catarrh. When the disease assumes 
a chronic course caseous conditions in the lungs are produced." 
" Caseous changes in the mucosa of the stofuach and intestines 
have not yet been observed" 
The desperate attempts which have been made to graft a sec- 
ond " wide-spread epidemic disease " upon the porcine interests of 
this country, under the name of swine plague, which should be a 
pest, something which sweeps life away, both by the Agricultural 
Department, and its notorious " Board of Inquiry," as well as by 
Prof Welsh, of Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, and to 
establish the identity of this hypothetical and totally non-existent 
" pest " with the Schweine-seuche," demand some attention here. 
As is well known, it has been the writer's endeavor to protect 
the hog-growers of the country from the absolutely baseless as- 
sertions of their government, and it is appropriate to call attention 
to the fact that this second " wide-spread epidemic among the 
hogs in this country," this terrible bureaucratic pest, never made 
its appearance until the author had made public the results of his 
earlier investigations in Nebraska. The report in which this 
second pest is first described is dated 1886, but was not published 
until 1887., 
In a recent letter sent to the agricultural press of the country 
and in which the Agricultural Department of this country cries 
" baby," it is claimed that the work of that department has been 
honest and scientific. If it has, then, why cry for support ? In 
that report of 1886, this second terrible pest is described as a 
pulmonary trouble pure and simple. In the next report, of 1887 
(issued 1888), we cannot tell what it is, for though honest 
and scientific in its work, the government so mixes up things 
that no human being can tell what this pest really is. We are 
told that " the lung lesions point to the existence of swine plague, 
and that the intestinal lesions indicate that of hog cholera," also 
in the same pig ; that this pest is an " infectious pneumonia ; " 
of " the difficulties attending investigations of diseases which have 
their seat in the lungs," though the government does say that 
" in none of these experiments was the disease reproduced" and 
then it says, when speaking of its correct " diagnosis," " The 
