128 
W. T. THTSELTON DYER. 
Chief Medical Officer, and under his directions a very bold 
and skilfully conducted attempt has been made to stamp out 
the disease. His whole report w'ould be well worth printing 
as a model of procedure based upon strictly scientific prin- 
ciples. The following passages may be quoted : 
On each plantation, the Great Amalgam included, it is 
easy to see at what point the disease first took hold, and that 
it is radiating from that spot. The great probability is, 
therefore, that the disease is carried about from one place to 
another by physical agencies, a view of its distribution that 
accords with the glutinous properties [papillose surface] of 
the spores [sporangia], that cause them to adhere readily to 
any object with which they are brought into contact. Many 
people have visited the great Amalgam Estate, curious to see 
the coffee-leaf disease, and several of them have afterwards 
visited the other patches of coffee in the same district, and 
the presumption is that measures were not in each case 
adopted to prevent the spores of the disease being thus 
carried from one place to another.’^ 
***** 
On the 22nd I saw the estate of Viti. It was easy to 
see the disease had there begun on the trees nearest the 
landing-place from the river, as the trees growing at that 
spot were covered by the disease for a short distance around 
them, but the disease became gradually less prevalent as the 
distance from the landing-place increased, and at the further 
end of the plantation was not apparent.” 
The stamping out” having been sanctioned by the 
Government, Dr. McGregor gives the following account of 
the method adopted : 
1 proceeded next day to near Viti, the place to be dealt 
with first, as being the largest and most liable to be tra- 
versed by natives and others. As a description of the pro- 
ceedings undertaken at Viti will give a correct idea of how 
the same work was carried out at each of the other places, I 
shall give the former in detail. Our camp was pitched on 
the other side of the river, nearly opposite Viti. Food was 
supplied from the native town of Na-Toa-Ika, on the same 
side of the river as the encampment. In the morning 
each of the natives employed put aside his sulu, substituting 
one of banana leaves. I myself and the other two Eu- 
ropeans with me — Mr. Vaughan and Mr. Gibb — took a spare 
suit of clothes, which we left in the boat by which we 
all crossed to Viti, and which was anchored in mid-stream 
during the day when we were at work. At night the men 
