186 ABSTRACTS AND REPORTS.

A professional spayer operated on thirty-eight young pigs of from 45 to 60 days old. Despite the operation, these animals showed the symptoms of <:estrum at from 3 to 8 months, and monthly thereafter, just as if they had not been spayed.

The owner desired to raise an action against the person who had per­formed the operation, on the ground that it had not been properly performed, and with a VJeW to procuring evidence he called in M. Barthelmy.

The latter, basing his opinion on current physiological notions, attributed the phenomena of <:estrum to incomplete removal of the ovaries, and he gave a report to this effect.

The action was therefore raised, and as the defendant asserted that he had seen <:estrum set in in females that had been properly spayed, the court ordered that five of the pigs showing most pronouncedly the phenomena of <:estrum should be killed, and that the state of parts should be ascertained by a veterinary surgeon named. This was done, and M. Barthelmy assisted at the autopsy. To the astonishment of both it was found that the operation had been well performed, and that the ovaries, oviducts, and almost the entire cornua of the uterus had been removed.

THE MODE OF ALIMENTATION OF THE LIVER FLUKE.

KUCHENMEISTER in the first edition of his work expressed the' opinion that the dis tom a hepaticum derived its sustenance from the bile accumulated in the hepatic ducts, this view being favoured by the analogy of colour between the intestinal contents of the fluke and the bile of the sheep. Leuckart denies that this is the method of alimentation. He believes that their nourishment is drawn from a brownish mucus which lines the bile ducts wherever the flukes are found. Microscopic examination shows that this brownish sub­stance is not bile; it contains numerous more or less modified epithelial cells, and red blood corpuscles. The elements of this substance are found also in the contents of the intestinal canal of the fluke, where, however, the blood corpyscles are generally swollen and discoloured. In the second edition of his treatise Kiichenmeister abandons his former view, having come to the conclusion that the parasite nourishes itself from blood. Professor Railliet has made an observation 1 which seems to strongly confirm the correctness of this latter view. In examining a number of flukes taken from the hver of a sheep whose blood·vessels had for anatomical purposes been injected with plaster of Paris, coloured with ultramarine, he found that the digestive tube in nearly the half of the parasites was itself injected with this same substance. There was not a trace of this material in the bile ducts. Professor Railliet's interpretation is that these flukes, at the moment when the injection was made, were engaged in sucking the small vessels in the wall of the bile ducts, and had thus ingested the plaster of Paris, as they normally do the blood. The view that the distoma is a blood· sucking parasite comports well with the fact that the disease determined by its presence has profound anaomia for one of its prominent symptoms.

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THE ACTION OF COMMON SALT ON THE VITALITY OF BACTERIA.

PROFESSOR FORSTER of Amsterdam reports, as the result of his experiments, that the salting or pickling of the flesh of animals that have suffered from

1 Bulletin de la Societe ZoologiQ.ue de France, 1890.

ABSTRACTS AND REPORTS.

tuberculosis, puerperal or wound infection (caused by the erysipelas strepto­cocci of Hartmann and Winckel), swine rothlauf, and possibly other animal diseases, is not sufficient to destroy the vitality of the specific pathogenic parasites found therein.

Some pathogenic bacteria resist the action of common salt badly; the cholera bacilli, for example, were found to be dead some hours after they had been covered with common salt. The tubercle bacillus, on the other hand, showed itself very resistant, as proved by experiments with the pickled flesh of perlsltcht cows and human sputum.

Forster supposes that the different degrees of resistance to the action of common salt exhibited by different bacteria depend upon whether these form spores or not. Experiments with anthrax bacilli indicate this. For example, when blood, spleen, or liver of animals that have suffered from anthrax is salted in the ordinary manner, the bacilli are killed in less than eighteen hours, whereas potato cultures of anthrax bacilli containing numerous spores excited anthrax when inoculated into animals months after the cul­tures had been covered with a concentrated solution of common salt.

It appears that, in the case of some bacteria, e.g., the typhoid bacillus, the vegetative forms are gradually killed by common salt, while resting forms -spores-remain unaffected. At least Forster found that in cliltures of the typhoid bacillus that had been covered with sterilised solution of common salt for a couple of months, bacilli were extremely seldom to be found, but still numerous colonies of typhoid bacilli developed on llloculating from the salted culture into nutrient gelatine, in the form of stab, streak, or plate cultnres.

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STATISTICS REGARDING TUBERCULOSIS AMONG CATTLE IN BAVARIA.

BETWEEN the 1St October 1888 and the 30th September 1889, tuberculosis was discovered in the following animals after slaughter :-

According to the class of animal-331 bulls, 1292 oxen, 5951 cows, 603 young cattle, 54 calves; giving a total of 8231 head.

According to the sex-1821 male, 6410 female animals. According to the age of the animals-Calves under 6 weeks, 43; from

6 weeks to I year, 76; from I to 3 years, 950; from 3 to 6 years, 2872 ; over 6 years, 4290.

According to race or stamp-Lowland stamp, 3968; mountain stamp, 2098; foreign cattle, 490; crosses, J675.

According to the seat of the disease - There were affected outwardly (udder), 139; in an internal organ, with its lymphatic glands and serous covering, 39°2; several or all the organs of a body cavity, ,1592; more than one body cavity, 2246; tubercles in the flesh, 53; general tuberculosis, 500.

Quality of the flesh of the tuberculous animalS-1st class, II32; 2nd class, 3°73; 3rd class, 3814.

The number of these animals whose flesh had to be dealt with under veterinary police regulations was 5528.

Of the total 8231 tuberculous animals, the disease had been definitely recognised or suspected during life in 1293.

The disease was also definitely recognised or suspected during life in 3100 other animals, but in these the correctness of the diagnosis was not verified by slaughter. These latter were-44 bulls, 707 oxen, 2108 cows, 236 young cattle, and 5 calves.

According to sex-852 male and 2248 female animals.