INVESTIGATIONS OF THE BUREAU OF ANIMAL INDUSTRY. 625 
called swine plagues there are one and the same with that in 
this country, except the Wildseuche and Rouget. (L. c. p. 246.) 
Again, he writes in the same connection: 
“ Has Mr. Salmon given a particle of evidence showing 
that this germ produces a single lesion, or does a single thing 
that that of swine plague does not ? 
“ Then, reader, what is it? 
“ I will answer for you : An imposition ! 
“ Not content with giving such condemnatory evidence 
against himself, Mr. Salmon has gone so far as to pile it up so 
high that his eventual crushing into a worse specimen of non¬ 
entity than his ‘ hog cholera ’ psychosis is but a question of 
time. He has done this by sending a lot of cultures of his 
‘ nonentity ’ to European investigators, all of whom say that 
they have never met with it, and that it does not occur in any 
case of swine plague known to them in their respective coun¬ 
tries. They certainly ‘settle the question’ that there is no 
pathogenic germ known to them, and 1 think the question has 
also been sufficiently settled that the real swine plague, with 
its one ovoid, belted germ, is either known to them all, or that 
there is evidence that it exists in their respective countries, 
except the at present somewhat peculiar character of the tes¬ 
timony from Sweden and Denmark with regard to the micro¬ 
organism, of which I have no fears that the little inconsisten¬ 
cies will eventually be cleared up.” 
The time has come when all of these little inconsistencies 
have been cleared up, but not in the way that Billings antici¬ 
pated. After reading that von Esmarch found the germ to 
answer our description, and that Frosch finds that description 
so complete that no doubt can arise concerning its identity, 
and that this germ is the cause of the American swine dis¬ 
ease, what can be our opinion of Billings’ contention ? And 
above all, what are we to think of the Committee on Intelli¬ 
gence and Education, who demand that when the statements 
of the Bureau conflict with the results of men like Billings 
they must be confirmed by independent investigators before 
any dependence is placed upon them ? 
I have not space to go into details concerning the many 
