384 Professor Simondss Report to the Royal Veterinary College. 
but the long continued drought and high temperature which 
existed during the summer would lead to the conclusion that 
the entozoa on which this disease depends had entered the 
organism of the sheep during the preceding year, and that the 
state of weather referred to had acted beneficially in enabling 
the sheep to withstand the exhausting effects of the entozoa for 
a longer time than usual. 
On several occasions during the year our attention was 
directed to cases of accidental poisoning of cattle and sheep by 
articles of diet, particularly by adulterated cake. The chemist 
of the College has been kept actively employed in investiga- 
tions of this kind, and in many instances he has been enabled 
to detect the precise cause of mischief. In not a few, the 
deleterious agent was shown to be a variety of the mustard 
plant, the seeds of which had been commingled with linseed 
and other ordinary articles used in manufacturing cake for 
feeding purposes. 
Notable, however, were the numerous cases of poisoning 
which occurred in the autumn among young cattle, in particular 
from eating acorns. Much mystery surrounded the early 
instances of the kind, and it was with some difficulty that even 
scientific as well as practical men could realize the fact. The 
investigations which were personally made, in different and far 
distant localities, soon showed that acorns eaten to excess were 
a powerful vegetable poison. The losses in some individual 
herds were very heavy ; full 75 per cent, of the diseased animals 
succumbing to the effects of the poison. Extensive publicity 
was given to the circumstance, which doubtless had a very 
beneficial effect by leading persons to remove their cattle from 
parks and feeding grounds on which oak trees abounded. 
Having now directed attention to the chief points of interest 
connected with cattle pathology which occurred during the past 
year, I have, in concluding this report, to describe the results 
of certain experiments undertaken with the view to determine 
the contagious nature, or otherwise, of the disease known as 
" foot-rot " of sheep. The experiments extended over several 
months, and various methods of introducing the matter dis- 
charged from diseased sheep into the feet of healthy sheep were 
adopted. Inoculation by direct incision of the skin between the 
digits was found to produce considerable irritation, with dis- 
charge from the surface, and in one or two of these instances 
fungoid growths followed the morbid action which was set up. 
In each case, however, the animal recovered in a week to a 
fortnight without any treatment being had recourse to. The 
introduction of the discharge from canker in the foot of the 
horse, and also of softened tuberculous deposit from the lungs 
