ROYAL AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY OF ENGLAND. 217 
great attention to re-vaccination, owing to the circumstance of epi- 
demics of variola having latterly manifested themselves with a 
severity to which we had become quite unaccustomed since the in- 
troduction of vaccination. Re-vaccination has, consequently, been 
resorted to on a very extended scale, and has had the effect of ar- 
resting the epidemics. Thus, in W urtemburg, forty-two thousand 
persons who have been re-vaccinated have only presented eight 
cases of varioloid, whereas one-third of the cases of variola have 
latterly occurred on persons who had been vaccinated. It is princi- 
pally between the ages of fourteen and thirty-five that vaccinated 
persons are exposed to be attacked by variola. When there is an 
epidemic, the danger commences earlier, and children of nine years 
of age may be seized. Prudence, therefore, requires that, under 
ordinary circumstances, re-vaccination should be performed at the 
age of fourteen or fifteen, and four years earlier if within the radius 
of an epidemic of variola.” 
Royal Agricultural Society of England. 
A weekly Council was held at the Society’s-house, in Hanover- 
square, on Wednesday, the 24th of February, 1847 ; present, the 
Earl of Egmont, President, in the chair ; Capt. Rushout, M.P., 
Mr. Raymond Barker, Mr. Humphrey Brandreth, Mr. G. J. Bosan- 
quet, Mr. F. C. Cherry, Mr. A. E. Fuller, M.P., Mr. W. G. Hay ter, 
M.P., Mr. J. Kinder, Mr. P. Pusey, M.P., Professor Sewell, Mr. 
Wm. Shaw, Mr. Barugh Almack. Dr. Calvert, Mr. E. Perkins, 
Mr. T. Turner, Mr. T. R. Tweed, and Mr. W. B. Webster. 
Inhaling Apparatus . — Professor Sewell favoured the Council 
with the result of his inquiries into the most economical and effi- 
cient modes of administering the vapour of aether in the case of 
animals connected with a farm. He found that the simplest and 
most economical of these modes was at the same time the most 
efficient; and that in many cases, especially when the smaller 
animals, such as lambs, were to be operated upon, a sponge, moist- 
ened with aether and held in the palm of the hand, was amply 
sufficient to induce the required insensibility, when the more cum- 
brous and costly apparatus prepared expressly for the purpose had 
entirely failed. For larger animals a bladder, with breathing 
mouth-piece, was found to answer quite well ; and by passing 
elastic bands over this bladder at different distances, the quantity 
of aether required in any case could be nicely adjusted. For dogs 
or other animals, in a state'of madness, he had a wire- work muzzle 
secured over the nose and mouth, and the whole inserted into a 
small cylindric vessel containing the sponge and aether. He then 
