§ SIR R. TEMPLE (Surrey, Kingston)I beg to ask the President of the Board of Agriculture whether the Board of Agriculture, in order to trace to its primary source certain contagious diseases among animals, have for this purpose appointed 31 Travelling Inspectors, one, the chief, with a salary of £900 per annum, and 30 others at £250 a year; whether these gentlemen possess the scientific knowledge rendering them capable of satisfactorily performing such duties; and whether the Travelling Inspector has supplanted the Veterinary Inspector, the person who should be called upon to perform such services?
§ MR. H. GARDNERThe duties assigned to the Principal of the Animals Division of my Department and to the temporary Assistant Inspectors appointed for swine fever business, who are the officers to whom I understand the hon. Baronet to refer, do not require for their performance the possession of veterinary or scientific knowledge. On the retirement, at the end of last year, of the former Director of the Veterinary Department, a re-arrangement of duties was sanctioned, and my veterinary officers are now exclusively engaged on work of a professional character, but no work requiring the possession of veterinary knowledge has been transferred to an officer not possessing such knowledge.