Scientific Serials

Abstract

IN the Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England (third series, vol. iv. pt. 1) there is an interesting paper on the home produce, imports, consumption, and price of wheat over forty harvest years, 1852–3 to 1891–2, by Sir J. B. Lawes and Dr. J. H. Gilbert. This paper, extending to fifty-five pages, contains a general review of the produce of the experimental plots at Rothamsted, from which they have annually calculated the wheat crop of this country.—The first of the official reports is that of the Royal Veterinary College on investigations conducted for the Royal Agricultural Society during the year 1892. An interesting case of actinomycosis is related; a heifer with tongue badly diseased was put under Thomassen's treatment. Potassium iodide administered at first in doses of one drachm, twice daily, and the doses gradually increased to three drachms, effected a complete cure in about ten weeks.—Experiments have lately been made at the Veterinary College with Koch's tuberculin. The results in the case of seventy-two animals inoculated and afterwards killed show that “the tuberculin pointed out correctly the existence of tuberculosis in twenty-seven animals and wrongly in five, and it failed to indicate the existence of the disease in nineteen. In only three of the twenty-seven animals in which the tuberculin correctly pointed out the existence of tuberculosis could a positive diagnosis have been made by any other means.” Experiments have also been made with Kalning's mallein, and “the results warrant the statement that mallein is an agent of greater precision than tuberculin, and that it is likely to render most important service in any attempt to stamp out glanders.”