ANNIVERSARY ADDEESS. 13 



be permitted to refer to the prize offered by the Council for the 

 best Essay containing the results of original research on the physio- 

 logical action of the poison of any Australian snake, spider, or 

 tick — to be sent in not later than May, 1895. 



A NEW VACCINE TO PROTECT AGAINST ANTHRAX. 



In these times anything which increases the productive power of 

 the land is of interest, and such virtually is the protection of our 

 flocks in certain districts from anthrax. This was the first infectious 

 disease proved to be due to the presence of microbes, and it is 

 now the best understood of them all. As far back as 1880 and 

 1881, Toussaint and Pasteur announced that they could produce 

 a modification of this microbe, inoculation of which produced 

 the disease in a milder form, that protected the animal against 

 the more virulent form. It is true that the immunity produced 

 is only temporary and somewhat uncertain, but there is now, of 

 course, no doubt that it is real. The method of Pasteur has 

 been largely employed in this Colony, but quite recently a corres- 

 pondent, a station manager (who from the specimens of his work 

 submitted to me appears to be an excellent worker), writes that 

 he has succeeded in producing a vaccine, of which he gives the 

 following amongst other particulars. He arrived at the fixed 

 standard of the attenuated virus in October, 1892, and experi- 

 ments, at first on smaller numbers of sheep, during 1893 gave 

 such uniformly good results, that all the young sheep, twelve 

 thousand, on the station were then inoculated. Without the 

 inoculation a mortality of twenty to thirty per cent, was practically 

 certain, while none of these have died from anthrax, and that this 

 is due to their being really " protected " is proved by the direct 

 hypodermic injection of virulent material, when absolute immunity 

 was shown. During the current year forty thousand sheep have 

 been inoculated, with similar results. On all the stations where 

 these sheep were treated they were dying rapidly, but within ten 

 days after the inoculations began the mortality absolutely ceased, 

 except in a small flock of one thousand two hundred, in Victoria, 

 where a suspicious death or two occurred. It is anticipated that 



