10 BULLETIN 106, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
A study of Table 2 illustrates some of the influences which modify 
the visual signs of the malady. Among the pregnant animals in 
which the granules were not apparent macroscopically, the fetus 
exceeded 24 inches in length in about 50 per cent of the cases, while in 
the earlier stages of pregnancy the granules were more generally 
present. Among nonpregnant females the influence of pyometra and 
recent parturition is very marked. 
Table 1 shows that many young heifers sold as veals escape the 
infection, while spayed heifers, usually free upon the range, quite 
generally escape. But the tables tell only a part. It was a very 
notable phenomenon that the probability of both the presence and 
intensity of the disease rested vary largely upon the question of 
copulation. 
The spaying of range heifers is not generally well done. The opera- 
tion is very carelessly and hastily performed, usually by the flank 
method, the operator thrusting his hand through the wound, grasping 
the ovaries and stripping them from the broad ligament between the 
thumb and fingers. The result is that 50 to 60 per cent of them are 
only partly spayed, some ovarian tissues are left which develop 
ovisacs and cysts, the heifers come in estrum or are nymphomaniac, and 
copulate freely with range bulls. The lesions of the granular venereal 
disease are uniformly seen in such imperfectly spayed animals, and 
show considerable intensity. In the perfectly spayed heifers the 
vulvar mucosa is generally normal, smooth, and pale rose-red, with 
but few if any visible nodules. 
Another striking illustration of the influence of coitus upon the 
intensity of the disease was observed in a lot of 270 two-year-old 
range Hereford heifers which had evidently been kept away from the 
bull, except in the case of one individual which had, perhaps acci- 
dentally, become pregnant. In the 269 nonpregnant animals the 
disease was quite uniformly present, but only a few nodules were 
seen in each individual. Careful inspection was required lest they 
be passed over. The vulvar mucosa of the one pregnant heifer, 
however, bore more of the granules than the other 269 collectively. 
The entire mucosa was swollen and red, and dense masses of granules 
crowded thickly upon each other. 
Throughout its long course the intensity of the infection rises and 
falls, sometimes in obedience to known causes, as copulation, some- 
times in a manner not yet understood. During the period at which 
the disease is at its zenith few animals fail to show the clinical 
evidences of its presence, as is shown by Table 1, according to which 
the evidences of the disease were apparent in 95 per cent of cases, 
This is no higher than regularly observed at this age in dairy herds, 
