Investigations of the bureau oE animal industry. 547 
ence have been so carefully pointed out as they were in the 
report of the Bureau for 1886. 
Under such circumstances the investigator’s own conclu¬ 
sion must be taken, when it is given in such positive language, 
and no one has a right to go behind it and claim that the in¬ 
vestigator meant something different from what he wrote. 
The investigator has the germs under his own eyes, and if he 
cannot tell what germ he has how ridiculous it would be for 
some one else, who has never seen the germ, to attempt to 
decide from the written description of the man who himself 
cannot tell! 
In the face of these facts, how could the Committee on In¬ 
telligence and Education pretend in their report, at the Wash¬ 
ington meeting, that the discovery of the identity of the Bil¬ 
lings swine plague germ (as now accepted by him) with the 
hog cholera germ of the Bureau, sustained the claims of Bil¬ 
lings and showed the Bureau reports to be unreliable:' How 
could the committee record its belief that his work was 
“really correct and valuable,” and that ours was a disgrace 
to the profession? How absurd this is when it is apparent 
that the man, who in his report reiterated again and again his 
conclusion that no such germ existed, is only too glad to give 
the impression now that this was the germ he was working 
with from the first. 
How could the committee, with such undisguised exulta¬ 
tion, tell us that “ Dr. Billings boldly announces that he found 
his germ of swine plague in July, 1886, among the first pigs 
that he examined in Nebraska, which had died of the disease. 
Did the committee stop to inquire what germ he found at 
that time ? Did they take into account his many denials of 
the existence of any germ which had the least resemblance to 
the hog cholera germ of the Bureau reports? If so, how can 
they come before this meeting and try to give the impression 
that the germ which Billings first found in Nebraska was 
identical with the hog cholera germ of the Bureau ? These are 
serious questions, and relating as they do to an attack upon 
the reputation of individual members of this Association, as 
well as upon that of the Bureau in which veterinarians are 
