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Compendium der speciellen Chirurgie ftir Thierarzte. Von Dr Eugen Frohner, Professor und Dirigent der chirurgischen Klinik an der Konigl. Thieriuztl. Hochschule in Berlin. Stuttgart, Ferdinand Enke 1898.

This is a very useful student's text-book of a little over 300 pages. The preface explains that it is a summary or digest of the author's course of lectures, which he has been in a measure compelled to publish owing to the issue of an unauthorised version of the same. The various surgical diseases of the domesticated animals are succinctly treated under the heads of cause, symptoms, and treatment. The information given within small space is wonderfully full, and, although it is mainly a student's book, it is by no means beneath the attention of the experienced practitioner, since it gives an accurate sketch of the present day position of scientific veterinary surgery.

The Anrrual Statistical and General Report of the Army Veterinary Depart­ment for the Year ending 31st March 1898.

The Annual Report of the Director-General of the Army Veterinary Department shows that the health of the army horses in the United Kingdom during the past year was very satisfactory, although the rates of inefficiency, mortality, and admissions to treatment were all somewhat higher than during the previous twelve months. The amount of inefficiency from disease and injuries was 65' 1 2 per cent. of the average strength, and the mortality 2'73 per cent., the corresponding figures for the previous year having been 61'10 and 2'52 respectively. As compared with the previous year, there was an increase of 77 in the admissions for diseases of the chest and air-passages, and of 150 for strangles. No case of glanders or farcy occurred during the year, but in consequence of some suspicion attaching to a horse that died from "pycemia" the two animals that stood next to this one were tested with mallein, with the result that neither reacted.

Veterinary-Captain Blenkinsop, in his report regarding the army horses in Egypt, records the fact that the animals belonging to the British army of occupation were free from glanders during the year, although the disease existed to a considerable extent in Cairo and Alexandria. Testimony is given to the great value of testing suspected horses with mallein.

In South Africa a severe outbreak of glanders occurred amongst the local transport at Etchowe, but by the use of mallein and the prompt slaughter of all the horses that reacted the disease was stamped out. The rate of sickness and mortality amongst the army horses in South Africa was unusually high during the year.

The Report shows that, as in former years, very excellent results, at a trifling cost, have been obtained at the Army Vaccine Institute.

Examination of Horses as to Soundness and Selec;tion as to Purchase. By Edward Sewell, M.R.C.V.S.L. London: Bailliere, Tindall & Cox. 1898.

ACCORDING to the preface this book has been written "to assist the horse­owner, the farmer, and the colonist to judge for himself as to the practical soundness of a horse he may be interested in " which, coming from a practising veterinary surgeon, is exceedingly generous, if nothing more than that. Examining horses as to soundness is work for veterinary surgeons, and

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there is little danger of immediate invasion of the field by farmers and colonists, or by those, more especially, who may read this book. It is easier to write a long bad book than a short good one. This is an indifferent pro· duction, and but little else could be expected from an attempt to crowd into eighty-,ix small pages-including illustrations of dentition-all that should be known by farmers and others of unsoundness in horses. The book has many and various faults, but only a few need be pointed out; the rest will be dis­covered. Every veterinary surgeon knows, or ought to know, that the examiner who relies solely on the catoptric test of sight may overlook small cataracts. The condition of the nasal membrane and of the submaxillary and other glands has some importance. The poll, throat, trachea, jugulars, and neck receive attention from mo,t veterinary surgeons. The horse's arm does not extend downwards from the elbow, which, by the way, is sometimes capped. Un­nerved horses and others affected with navicular disease are sometimes offered for sale, but the horse buyer must judge for himself, for he will look in vain into this book for the needful information. Loose wall is described as false­quarter, which is not only a different defect, but one that is incurable. Little is said of defects of the hindquarters, fractured ilium or ischium is not even mentioned, and what is given concerning the stifle might have been left out without loss. Curb and its consequences are curiously explained, and the existence of bone spavin is considered sufficient to bar the purchase of any horse, notwithstanding common experience of the usefulness of spavined hocks. In the chapter dealing with action, p. 43, mention is made of a £350 horse "which had the most extravagant action in front, and although the horse apparently went sound, the feet had every disease that the horse's foot could possibly be afflicted with ., This may not be an extravagant state· ment of an exceptional case, but it reads like one. The colonist will" judge for himself." The pages devoted to" examination of the respiratory apparatus" may serve their purpose, and the illustrations of the teeth constitute about the only distinctly commendable feature of a book which, in a sense, recalls Christopher North's description of a sheep's head-" There is a fine lot of con­fused eating in it." If a second edition should be called for, the author would be well adVIsed to recast the whole work, fill in omissions, and endeavour to supply less objectionable explanations of the defects of horses.

Cape of Good Hope Department of Agriculture. Report of the Colonial Veterinary Surgeon and the Assistant Veterinary Surgeons for the year 1897.

As was to be expected, this report teems with matter of great interest regarding the recent disastrous invasion of South Africa by rinderpest and the measures put into operation to check the plague. We gather from it that these measures have by no means always given the results expected, and that in such circum­stances matters did not always proceed quite smoothly between the Colonial veterinary surgeon and the medical experts who were deputed to continue the researches initiated by Professor Koch. The report appears to us to be an absolute vindication of the work of Mr Hutcheon and his staff of veterinary assistants.

It is generally known that Professor Koch, before he left South Africa in the early part of 1897, recommended that an attempt should be made to combat the rinderpest invasion by carrying out protective inoculation of the healthy cattle with bile from animals that had suffered from the disease. He did 110t believe that this method would have the effect of spreading the disease, and his last words on it were, "that this discovery is practically applicahle I con­sider absolutely proved." Apparently inspired with confidence by this assertion, Mr Hutcheon and his assistants immediately began to put the bile method in