4. “On Rats and Plague,”

by Mr. H. C. Field. (Transactions, p. 443.)

Sir James Hector remarked that there was something in the periodic seven-year illness, for it had been experienced in America, the animals at these periods suffering from some form of plague.

Mr. Tregear said that if rats died in large numbers every seven years it was a point of great interest and should be investigated; it was not generally known. There was no proof, however, of their having died of plague.

Mr. Harding did not think the paper bore out what it tried to prove.