561 
REPLY TO DR. AUSTIN PETERS CRITICISM. 
years ” (one year, to be exact.—D. E. S.) “ did the Chief of 
the Bui eau of Animal Industry call Billing's’ swine plague 
‘ hog cholera ’ for the sake of creating confusion?” If Dr. 
Peters will refresh his memory as to the literature of the 
subject, he will find that Dr. Billings’ report on swine plague 
did not appear until June 30, 1888, or a year and a half after 
the report of the Bureau that he quotes from was writ¬ 
ten, and that we could not have known in advance what his 
position would be, or what name he would apply to either 
disease. In his newspaper articles Dr. Billings asserted most 
positively that the germ he had found was identical with that 
described as causing German swine plague (schweine-seuche), 
and he repeats this in his report (1888) and goes so far as to 
say (page 136) that “Mr. Salmon’s specific ‘ hog cholera mi¬ 
crobe was missed, and it ‘ ever will be missed ’ in the Amer¬ 
ican swine plague, no matter who seeks it, or how much time 
they may spend in the hunt.” 
If Billings had been right in this, and his subsequent 
course had been consistent, there would have been no confu¬ 
sion, for the German swine plague, the swine plague of the 
Bui eau and Billings’ swine plague would have been caused 
by identical germs, and there would have been no confusion 
in classing the three together as one disease, or as variations 
of one disease. As far as could be seen, therefore, from the 
literature at hand at the time our report was written, our 
nomenclature was calculated to avoid any confusion, even 
with Billings’ writings. We could scarcely be expected to 
foresee that Billings would discard his swine plague germ 
(which he asserted was identical in its “ micro-morpho-bio- 
logical phases” (report, pages 113, 114) with the germs of 
wild-seuche, hen cholera and rabbit septicaemia), and 
come to the front with an entirely different microbe as the 
cause of his swine plague. This other microbe is the hog 
cholera miciobe of the Bureau, as Peters sufficiently shows, 
and it is the germ which Billings, up to 1889, asserted had no 
existence. If, therefore, confusion has been the result, the 
Bui eau of Animal Industry is not responsible for it. 
If the name hog cholera was not used in the place of 
