EDITORIAL. 
159 
see the profit of securing intelligent attendance upon their sick 
or disabled animals in order to restore them to usefulness. We, 
therefore, felicitate the profession upon the prospects that lie 
before it. 
In a recent article published in these pages, Prof. W. L. 
Williams has put the subject in such a forcible manner that we 
here reproduce one paragraph, and commend it for its wisdom 
and elegance : 
“ Intelligence, close companionship, beauty of form and grace of 
motion, attainable only in living beings, guarantees a permanent place 
for the horse, and the passing of the lower types only enhances the 
value of those retained, so that the intelligent, competent horse, in field 
or on road, in the carriage or under the saddle, in peace or war, is as 
highly prized to-day in affection or gold as the Bucephalus of Alexander 
the Great or the chariot horses of the Olympian gods. ” 
SOUTH AFRICAN HORSE SICKNESS. 
The true etiology of this deadly equine plague that is at the 
present time decimating the ranks of the British cavalry and 
transport service in South Africa, still remains an unsolved 
enigma. From the reports of veterinarians and others at pres¬ 
ent in that part of the world, it appears that the disease is due to 
some toxic principle that emanates from the earth and settles 
on the grass during the night time. That there is considerable 
truth in this hypothesis is borne out by the fact that horses that 
are kept from grazing upon the prairie or “ veldt ” during the 
night and until the dew has evaporated from off the grass in the 
morning, usually escape the disease. Whether this lethal ema¬ 
nation that arises from the earth and grass is due to the pres¬ 
ence of a specific bacteria, or to a fungus parasite similar to the 
plasmodiiim malarics that causes malarial fever in man is un¬ 
known, although the opinion appears to be prevalent among 
investigators of this disease, that it is caused by a parasite of 
the protozoa class. Such parasites have been found in the blood 
of horses suffering from the disease, though attempts to isolate 
this micro-organism in a culture medium and produce the dis¬ 
ease in healthy animals by inoculation have failed. The disease 
