INVESTIGATIONS OF THE BUREAU OF ANIMAL INDUSTRY. 627 
examined the question can have a reasonable doubt, and if 
Billings had in 1888 the same germ which he sent to Koch in 
1889, what can be his justification for denying the existence of 
the hog cholera germ described in the Bureau reports? 
Upon this supposition does not his own report make him out 
a bungler as an investigator, and an ignoramus in bacteriology. 
Billings is now willing to have it assumed that he was 
working with the hog cholera germ from 1886 to 1888, and 
by so doing puts himself in a position where such unenviable 
charges naturally suggest themselves in connection with his 
work, because he finds even this embarrassment preferable to 
the other horn of the dilemma. 1 do not see how it can be 
admitted that the germ which he then described was the hog 
cholera germ. 
if his plate on page 104 of his report and fig. 3, plate 3, at 
the end of that work are examined; it will be evident that they 
do not represent the hog cholera germ, but rather that of the 
German swine plague. He insists in the text that this is the 
case, for he says: “We have thus described the normal, or 
general, cycle of development of the micro etiological organ¬ 
ism of the swine plague, the ‘ wildseuchej and hen cholera, as 
well as rabbit septicaemia, Texas fever, and yellow fever, all 
; of which diseases are caused by a member of this class of 
I ‘ belted ’ germs, and should be classed as extra-organismal, 
local, or land, septicaemia.’’ (L. c. p. 113.) 
Again, he says: “ This concludes my observations of the 
micro-morpho-biological phases presented by these micro- 
etiological organisms in the course of their development.” 
(L. c. p. 114.) 
Without stopping to discuss the nature of the micro- 
: organisms of Texas fever and yellow fever, it may now be 
asserted, even on the authority of Frosch, that if Billings was 
describing the micro-morpho-biological phases of the germs 
of wildseuche , hen cholera and rabbit septicaemia, he was not 
describing those of the hog cholera germ because the latter is 
an entirely different micro-organism. 
It surely is not necessary for me to quote extensively to 
prove that throughout Billings’ report he repeats the state- 
