84 
CORRESPONDENCE. 
affecting the cattle on the “ Ontario,” I will only add that neither 
from the observation of the fat cattle in our eastern stock-yards, 
nor from information furnished from the western States, have 
we any proof that contagious pleuro-pneumonia exists in the 
west. If, however, it is neglected now in the circumscribed 
eastern localities where it does exist, it will certainly reach the 
west sooner or later, and with most disastrous results. 
As Prof. Williams has repeatedly lent his name to the ob¬ 
structives on this side of the Atlantic, and as his letters have 
been heralded by statements that he was “ the leading veterinary 
pathologist ” and a “ distinguished authority on such matters,” I 
feel compelled, though very reluctantly to state some wholesome 
truths. 
First, about the “ Ontario” cattle, about which I have no dis¬ 
pute with any one, and will not be dragged into a controversy, 
having never seen them. Prof. Williams says u Everybody is 
surprised that such a gross mistake should have been made” 
Prof. Duguid, Veterinary Inspector-General, writes: “Professor 
Williams was the only one who had any doubt about the na¬ 
ture of the disease; Professors McCall and Walley were quite 
satisfied that it ivas pleuro-pneumonia 
I shall not undertake the invidious task of comparing Prof. 
Williams with others as an author. But his present blameworthy 
course and the claims made for him by the would-be obstructives 
demand these statements: 
1st. That when rinderpest invaded England in 1865, Wil¬ 
liams, then practising in Yorkshire, strongly urged that it should 
be met by medicinal treatment, and thereby contributed as far 
as he could to the preservation of the sick, the increase and dif¬ 
fusion of the poison, and the exceptionally heavy losses that befel 
that county. 
2d. That about two years ago Prof. Williams was convicted 
in a court of justice of having condemned a consumptive cow, 
under the impression that her disease was pleuro-pneumonia. 
These truths can easily be proven by the public prints of the 
time, and while I profoundly regret the necessity for recalling 
them, I have been left with no alternative, as Prof. Williams 
