1. Place the various instruments, forceps, scissors, scalpels, etc., needed for the autopsy inside the steriliser and sterilise by boiling for ten minutes; then open the steriliser, raise the tray from the interior and rest it crosswise on the edges. 2. Heat the searing irons to redness in a separate gas stove. [Illustration: FIG. 197.--Apparatus for post-mortem examination, animal on board.] 3. Drench the fur (or feathers) with lysol solution, 2 per cent. This serves the twofold purpose of preventing the hairs from flying about and entering the body cavities during the autopsy, and of rendering innocuous any vermin that may be present on the animal. [Illustration: FIG. 198.--Searing iron.] 4. Examine the cadaver carefully. Recollect that laboratory animals are not always hardy; death may be due to exposure to heat or cold, to starvation or over- or improper feeding or to the attack of rats--and not to the bacterial infection. 5. Fasten the body of the animal, ventral surface upward (unless there is some special reason for having the dorsum exposed), out on a board by means of copper nails driven through the extremities. 6. With sterile forceps and scalpel incise the skin in the middle line from the top of the sternum to the pubes. Make other incisions at right angles to the first out to the axillæ and groins, and reflect the skin in two lateral flaps. (Place the now infected instruments on the board by the side of the body or support them on a porcelain knife rest.) ~Seat of Inoculation.~-- 7. Inspect the seat of inoculation. If any local lesion is visible, sear its exposed surface and with the platinum loop, remove material from the deeper parts to make tube and surface plate cultivations and cover-slip preparations. Collect specimens of pus or other exudation in capillary pipettes for subsequent examination. 8. Inspect the neighbouring lymphatic glands and endeavour to trace the path of the virus. 9. Sear the whole of the exposed surface of the thorax with the searing irons. ~Pleural Cavity.~-- 10. Divide the ribs on either side of the sternum and remove a rectangular portion of the anterior chest wall with sterile scissors and a fresh pair of forceps, exposing the heart. Place the infected instruments by the side of the first set. 11. Observe the condition of the anterior mediastinal glands, the thymus and the lungs. Collect a quantity of pleuritic effusion, if such is present, in a pipette for further examination later. 12. Raise the pericardial sac in a fresh pair of forceps and burn through this structure with a searing iron. Collect a sample of pericardial fluid in a pipette for microscopical and cultural examination. 13. Grasp the apex of the heart in the forceps and sear the surface of the right ventricle. 14. Plunge the open point of a capillary pipette through the seared area into the ventricle and fill with blood. Make cultivations and cover-slip preparations of the heart blood.