OIL OF THE DUGONG A SUBSTITUTE FOR COD-LIVER OIL. 87 
goats, sheep, and horses. It exists in such violence over 
nearly seven degrees of latitude, that no precaution would be 
sufficient to save these animals. The horse is so liable to 
this disease, that only by great care in stabling can it be 
kept anywhere between 20° and 27° S., during the time 
between December and April. To this disease the horse is 
especially exposed, and it is almost always fatal. One attack, 
however, seems to secure immunity from a second. Cattle, 
too, are subject to it, but only at intervals of a few, some- 
times many, years ; but it never makes a clean swoop of the 
whole cattle of a village, as it would do of a troop of fifty 
horses. When the flesh of animals that have died of this 
disease is eaten, it causes a malignant carbuncle, which, when 
it appears over any important organ, proves rapidly fatal. It 
is more especially dangerous over the pit of the stomach. 
The effects of the poison have been experienced by mission- 
aries who had eaten properly cooked food, the flesh of sheep 
really, but not visibly, affected by the disease. The virus in 
the flesh of the animal is destroyed neither by boiling nor 
roasting. This fact, of which we have had innumerable exam- 
ples, shows the superiority of experiments on a large scale to 
those of acute and able physiologists and chemists in the 
laboratory ; for a well-known physician of Paris, after careful 
investigation, considered that the virus in such cases was 
completely neutralised by boiling. — Livingstone' s Travels . 
OIL OF THE DUGONG A SUBSTITUTE FOR COD-LIVER OIL. 
Australia offers us an oil which seems likely to prove a 
most agreeable and efficient substitute for cod-liver oil. A 
cetaceous animal, the dugong (. Halicore Australis , or Iialicore 
Dugong of Cuvier), inhabits the rivers and bays of the eastern 
coast of Australia, and many of the islands of the Indian 
Archipelago. It feeds on the submarine algae and fuci of 
shallow waters. It attains a length of seven or eight feet, 
and is described as something between a porpoise and a seal. 
The flesh is highly esteemed as a tender food, not unlike 
beef, and it yields an oil so bland and sweet, so free from 
disagreeable flavour or odour, that it may be given in much 
larger doses than cod-liver oil. Mr. W. Hobbs, a surgeon 
practising at Brisbane, Moreton Bay, has used the oil exten- 
sively in many chronic diseases. He is spoken of by our 
correspondent as a most intelligent man, and from his 
