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The trachoma and LGV organisms, the human pathogens of the species C. trachomatis, cause oculogenital infections and disease syndromes of the eye and genital tract. The incidence of the most prominent disease, endemic trachoma with eye-to-eye transmission, is decreasing all over the world. At the same time there is increasing recognition of high-frequency venereal infections with trachoma organisms and of the genital disease and occasional ocular disease that they cause. Laboratory techniques for diagnosis and investigation are improving, but work with these interesting intermediate agents remains more difficult than that with many other microorganisms. Proper recognition of the diseases is important because specific therapy is available.

Extract A genital disease of sheep in New Zealand has been shown to be due to infection with an organism of the genus Brucella (Buddie and Boyes, 1953). A consideration of the properties of the organism which distinguished it from the classical species of the genus and of its existence in naturally infected sheep in the rough phase suggested that it might be described as a stabilized mutant or variety of Brucella. An organism, probably identical to the New Zealand ovine Brucella, has been isolated from naturally infected rams in Australia (Simmons and Hall, 1953).

Extract Area surveys of East Coast breeding herds in New Zealand have indicated that poor nutrition, infectious genital disease and post-partum calf losses were major factors resulting in lowered calf-marking percentages (Fielden and McFarlane, 1959; Young, 1965). The importance of each or any combination of factors appeared to vary greatly between properties. In an attempt to break up the existing fertility problem into the more important biological components it was decided to study the performance of identified females in several selected herds. The investigation was implemented as an extension of normal clinical practice.

1. The characters of twenty-seven strains isolated from sheep in New Zealand and Australia were examined and compared with those of representative strains ofBrucella abortus, Br. suisandBr. melitensis.2. These strains could be classified in the brucella genus on the basis of cell morphology and staining, colonial morphology, cultural characteristics, biochemical properties, pathogenicity for laboratory animals and association with genital disease in the natural host.3. The ovine strains have never been observed in other than the non-smooth phase. Consequently, these organisms lack the specific surface antigens of smooth brucellae but are antigenically closely related to the non-smooth variants of other brucella species. Three antigenic factors were identified and their presence confirmed in all twenty-seven ovine strains.4. The N.Z. and Australian ovine strains appear sufficiently stable and distinguishable from other established groups of the brucella genus in a number of independently variable characters to justify their constituting either a new species,Brucella ovis,or a new variety,Brucella bruceivar.ovis australasiae.The author wishes to thank Prof. W. I. B. Beveridge for his continued interest and for providing accommodation and facilities.

In 1913, Nicolas, Durand and Favre 1 reported a series of cases of inguinal adenitis to which they gave the name lymphogranulomatosis inguinalis, and which they described as a specific genital disease, a clinical entity which had heretofore been observed in tropical countries and which was called "climatic bubo" or "strumous buboes of the groin." During the following ten years, further literature on the subject did not appear. In 1923, following a second report by Nicolas and Favre, numerous cases were recognized, and there was a belief that the disease might have been brought into Europe by the colonial troops during the recent war. Considerable confusion soon arose in the literature because of the similarity in terminology to other forms of lymphogranuloma, so that cases of granuloma inguinale and even Hodgkin's disease were confused with it in certain reports. Numerous careful studies have been made in Europe on a large