Thursday , December 7 , 1893 . 
785 
19. The efforts of the Board of Agriculture to stamp out pleuro- 
pneumonia have during the present year again been successful ; 
there have been eight outbreaks, as compared with thirty-five last 
year and 192 in 1891. In reference to foot and mouth disease, only 
two outbreaks have occurred this year — one in North London in 
January, in which the whole of the nine cows on the premises were 
slaughtered by the Board of Agriculture ; and the other at Guest- 
ling in Sussex — both of which were referred to in the previous 
report of the Council. There appears to have been a very decided 
increase in the number of outbreaks of anthrax this year as compared 
with previous years. There is reason to believe, however, that in 
some instances the deaths of animals attributed to anthrax were 
due to vegetable poisoning on account of the scarcity of ordinary 
keep during the sevei’e drought of the past summer. By the 
Contagious Diseases (Animals) Act of 1893, swine fever has been 
placed in the same category as pleuro-pneumonia, so that in future 
the slaughter of infected swine will be directed by the Central 
Authority, and compensation be paid out of the Imperial Exchequer. 
This policy is quite in accordance with the views of the Council. 
20. At the Royal Veterinary College, to which an annual grant 
is made by the Society towards the study of Comparative Pathology 
and Bacteriology, various experiments have proved the great value 
of tuberculin as an aid to the diagnosis of tuberculosis in cattle, and 
of mallein as an almost infallible agent for the detection of glanders 
in horses, even in its early stages. During the past summer several 
investigations have been made in regard to numerous deaths of 
cattle from vegetable poisoning, as mentioned above. Inquiries into 
the causes of louping-ill in sheep, and the life-history of the vegetable 
parasites which are the cause of ringworm, are now proceeding. 
21. The passing of the Fertilisers and Feeding Stuffs Act, 
1893, introduced into Parliament by the President of the Board 
of Agriculture, will, it may be hoped, help importantly in the 
repression of the adulteration of feeding-stuffs and manures, in which 
the Chemical Committee of the Society has given such valuable 
assistance in the past. In the absence of legislative provisions as to 
the purity of fertilisers or feeding-stuffs, the Society has from time 
to time published in its Journal, for the protection and guidance of 
members, the names of manufacturers who have supplied impure or 
adulterated articles, or who have given to their customers misleading 
descriptions of goods sold. For the future, the buyer will have the 
remedy against fraud largely in his own hands, for the new Act 
requires an invoice giving particulars of the article sold to be 
delivered by the vendor to the purchaser, — such invoice to have 
the effect of a warranty that the article is of the quality stated ; and 
the Act imposes heavy fines for false descriptions, and for the sale of 
articles deleterious to live stock. A copy of the Act, with the 
observations of the Chemical Committee thereon, will be printed in 
the next number of the J ournal for the information of members of 
the Society [see p. 795]. 
VOL. IV. T. S. — 16 3 F 
