66 



THE AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. 



In reviewing these various reports and 

 papers it seems a little unfortunate that it 

 should be necessary to publish results of 

 work done which are only able to do small 

 service towards the real check of the 

 disease and our knowledge of it. Such 

 reports are necessarily inconclusive or 

 conjectural in character, and do little 

 good besides securing to the worker 

 priority of suggestion or result in limited 

 directions, while the drawback to such 

 premature or immature work is that other 

 workers in the same field are perforce 

 obliged also to adopt the same attitude ol 

 importunity, or run the risk of forfeiting 

 the claim to originality and priority, 

 which to the scientific worker means 

 success. 



As is known, the Natal Veterinary 

 Department has for the last few years 

 been working towards the elucithition of 

 this knotty problem, and while the 

 difficulties and drawbacks have been 

 many — to instance, rinderpest, other 

 urgent work of a similar nature, great 

 and constant departmental demands, and 

 lately the state of war in which South 

 Africa has been plunged - still the work 

 has gone on steadily as the occasion 

 offered, with the result that much solid 

 and satisfactory work has been accom- 

 plisheJ, work of elimination and negation 

 — if the term may be allowed — rather 

 than the positive results often obtainable 

 in less difficult walks of scientific re- 

 search. 



The details of such work will appear in 

 due time, and will show the immense 

 amount of work and thought necessary to 

 the carrying out of such an investigation. 



Without attempting to place before the 

 readers of the Agricultural Journal a 

 tabulated report of the work done and 

 the conclusions already arrived at — which 

 being to a great degree technical would 

 serve no practical purpose beyond de- 

 monstrating the methods and diliiculties 

 of such work — it seems possible that a 

 description or detailing of the experiments 

 now in progress, and their object, might 

 result in some furtherance of the work if 

 those interested in the matter would enter, 

 to some extent, into the enquiry, and not 

 hesitate to express their views, and par- 

 ticularly give any relevant experiences 

 they may possess. 



Such experiences and observations must 

 amount to a great deal in a community of 

 intelligent farmers, who by reason of the 

 difficulty in obtaining professional assist- 

 ance, have had for years past to make 

 their own observations and deductions, 

 both as to the cause of the disease and its 

 treatment. 



In laying my views, therefore, before 

 the readers of the Agricultur d Journal, 

 I shall deem it a kindness if any points, 

 either corroborating or discounting these 

 views, are brought to my notice by those 

 whose knowledge of the disease is of long 

 standing, or who have suffered hearily 

 from its ravages. 



It has been with much pleasure that I 

 have learned, within the past few days, 

 that my impressions and theories as to 

 the causation of the disease have been 

 entertained also by my colleague. Dr. 

 Theiler, of Pretoria, and I shall, there- 

 fore, propose to ask him to give his views 

 of the cause of the disease to the readers 

 of our Natal Journal in corroboration of 

 those which are now appearing, as, while 

 they were arrived at quite independently 

 of "the Natal work, they are reassuring, 

 inasmuch as they record the observations 

 and theories of a careful and experienced 

 scientific worker in the same field. In a 

 report recently published by a South 

 African worker, having had many years 

 of experience with horsesickness, the 

 statement is made that the disease is not 

 due to the agency of insects, such as the 

 mosquito or other blood-sucking insects, 

 for various reasons adduced, and the 

 cause is declared to exist elsewhere. It is 

 in support of the view here denounced as 

 untenable that experiments are now, and 

 have Ijeen since the commencement of the 

 year, in progress in Natal, and it is in 

 concurrence with this view that Dr. 

 Theiler will also add his testimony in the 

 subsequent numbers of the Natal Agri- 

 cultural Journal. 



As illustrating the devastation caused by the 

 drought in the Hughenden District, Queensland, 

 Mr. Crank, stock inspector, who has toured the 

 north-west portion of the District, states that 

 one station has only ,39,000 sheep left out of 

 110 OOO. ■ Another has 10,000 left out of 42,000, a 

 third 1,000 out of 28.000, and a fourth 1G,00U out 

 of 42,000. He estimates that 45 per cent, of the 

 sheep in that district at the beginmrig of the 

 year are now dead from the effects of the dry 

 weather. Useful rains have fallen in the Central 

 Dis*;rict, registering from 2in, to :?in. in places. 



