CORRESPONDENCE. 
166 
of its ever having been contagious in any country. In the face 
of this however, and with but one or two exceptions, when asked 
the question : “ If a cow having pleuro-pneumonia was taken into 
a healthy herd might she not so vitiate the air as to cause other 
cattle coming in contact with her to take this same disease ? ” 
they answered, “ Yes.” Such inconsistency explains itself. The 
long delay in getting to work in this State has been occasioned 
by the unstable confidence which the Commonwealth reposes in 
her veterinarians. This is a lamentable fact; yet it remains such, 
and will until our ranks are expunged of those many forms of 
quackery which at present serve only to keep the profession at 
an ebb which obtains the contempt of an intelligent public. 
Chas. B. Michener, D.V.S. 
EXPLANATION. 
4 
Dear Mr. Editor : 
The remarks of the editor of the Veterinary Journal, Eng¬ 
land, in your issue of June, 1879, are before me, and require, I 
suppose, some notice from me. The passage in your Review of 
April reads in full, “ We long to see the day when ‘ our Review ’ 
shall contain contributions worthy of translation and recognition 
in other countries and among mediciners. Alas ! when will the 
day come. Yet we have no reason to complain, for about all the 
matter of any scientific value in the Veterinary Journal , Brit¬ 
ain! s leading review, is like our own, ‘ purloined ’ from conti¬ 
nental writers .” We are sorry our friend should have taken the 
word “purloined” in the severe sense which he has. We are 
fully aware the translations appearing in his journal have been 
credited to the original writers ; but what we do say, and will 
adhere to is, “ taken or borrowed from continental writers ”— 
further change of words or retraction is not my intention to 
make. As to the strictures of my “ borrowed German notions,” 
I never went to Germany to borrow “ originality,” either in 
ideas or character—a fact we will leave time to prove—thankful 
