In Dr. E. M. Nighbert, inspector in charge of the work of tick eradication; Dr. A. H. Logan, inspector in charge for hog cholera control; Dean P. H. Rolfs of the University, director of the Experiment Station, in charge of the work in Florida of the States Relations Service, and the numerous assistants placed by the Federal Government, under the direction of these three gentlemen, we have a large body of capable, trained and energetic experts, whose co-operation with our Board is of inestimable value to the State, and whose maintenance costs us nothing. The members of the State Live Stock Sanitary Board serve without remuneration, so that we have in Florida approximately thirty men who are engaged in promoting the work of live stock sanitation without expense to the taxpayers of the State. It is fitting, I think, that this Association should be reminded of this very great and very costly, but nevertheless wholly gratuitous, service which is being rendered to the interests which we represent. * * * So much for the past year; now for a glance forward. What I have just been saying indicates clearly the special work to which we ought, in my judgment, to devote ourselves in the immediate future--I mean the complete and final eradication of the tick in every county in Florida and the largest possible measure of control of hog cholera. If we see clearly, we see that these tasks are preliminary to all others. * * * Fortunately the tick is a very weak and vulnerable enemy, though so mischievous. Put all the cattle of Florida through the dipping vat once a fortnight for five or six months, and there would be no more ticks left in this State than there are snakes in Ireland. Let us consecrate ourselves here in this meeting to the doing of this thing, and doing it _soon_. Hog cholera is not so simple and manageable an affair. In the micro-organism which causes this disease, we face an enemy far subtler, more cunning, more elusive, more persistent and more swiftly fatal than is the tick. It escapes observation by the most powerful microscope; it laughs at quarantine lines; it flows in the stream; it lurks in the pool; it rides upon the foot of beast and bird, the shoe of man, the wagon's wheel; it soars aloft on the buzzard's wing; you can not catch and dip it.