Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 3 (1899).djvu/362

336 the experiment has been so successful that a similar lot has been sent this spring, the last consignment leaving by the 'Dunvegan Castle' on June 10th.

expressing any opinion on the subject of vivisection, in connection with the death of Mr. Lawson Tait, the well-known surgeon of the Midlands, it is interesting to recall some words written by him in a letter addressed to the 'Medical Press and Circular':—"Some day I shall have a tombstone put over me, and an inscription upon it. I want only one thing recorded on it, and that to the effect that he laboured to divert his profession from the blundering which has resulted from the performance of experiments on the sub-human groups of animal life, in the hope that they would shed light on the aberrant physiology of the human groups."

the meeting of the Zoological Society, on June 20th, Dr. Woods Hutchinson read a paper on Zoological Distribution of Tuberculosis from Observations made mainly in the Society's Gardens. Of 215 autopsies made in the Prosector's Room during the past six months, forty-nine presented the lesions of tuberculosis, i.e. 25·3 per cent, of the mammals and birds. This mortality fell most heavily upon the Ruminants and Gallinæ, and least so upon the Carnivores and Raptores. Race or family appeared to exert little influence upon susceptibility, mode of housing only a small amount, and food and food-habits much more. A close correspondence appeared to exist between immunity and the relative size of the heart in both birds and mammals.

is estimated that the loss to farmers from the "warbled" condition of the hides of their cattle by the well-known Ox Warble Fly, or Bot Fly (Hypoderma bovis), averages £16,000 for every 100,000 hides. Mr. Child, the Managing Secretary of the Leeds and District Hide, Skin, and Tallow Co., Ltd., we are informed, calculates that on 30,000 hides that passed their hands in one year, the net loss to the farmers was no less than £1500 from this cause alone.

greatly regret to announce the death, on the 1st inst., of Sir William Henry Flower, President of the Zoological Society, and late Director of the Natural History Department of the British Museum. An obituary notice by Dr. P.L. Sclater will appear in our next issue.