2
REPORT OF THE IMPERIAL INSTITUTE OF VETERINARY RESEARCH,.
consummation, however, was not immediately forthcoming, for there
followed the readjustment in sale prices a period of very considerable
natural diminution in the spread and intensity throughout India of the
most important cattle plague, namely rinderpest, against which the
laboratory to the largest extent manufactures a preventive serum.
This salutary depression in cattle disease for stockowners in India
connoted diminished demands for the main saleable product of the
laboratory, and hence the reduction in its income subsequent to the
readjustment of prices. Towards the close of the financial year
1924-25 there occurred a change from this state of relative quies-
cence ; symptoms of recrudescence in the intensity of rinderpest occurred
in the form of large and pressing demands for preventive serum from
the Bombay Presidency, and not long afterwards there arrived large
indents for preventive serum from nearly all the other Provinces. At
the close of the year the demands had assumed such magnitude that
the income of the laboratory swelled up to a figure which was not far
from that of its total expenditure for the year. Thus, for the financial
year 1924-25 the income of the laboratory was Rs. 6,66,927-0-5 (made
up as follows :—sale of sera and vaccines Rs. 6,53,313-10-6, sale of
animals Rs. 2,547-8-0, sale of garden produce Rs. 520-7-3, and sale of
miscellaneous articles Rs. 10,545-6-8). The total budgetted expenditure
for the year was Rs. 7,30,412-10-2. This figure representing expenditure
does not include depreciation on capital cost of buildings, cost of annual
repairs, and construction of minor building works. On the other hand,
in computing the income of the laboratory, account is not taken in the
figure given above of the surplus stocks of products manufactured, ac-
cumulated, and not sold during the year. It was indeed the anticipation
of a resuscitation in cattle disease that actuated the adoption of a policy
of manufacturing stocks in excess of what were necessary to meet current
demands, and the accumulation of a substantial reserve placed in the
Institute in a position to comply at once with the demands of the provinces
for material to cut short early the spread of outbreaks. The accounts of
the laboratory have been subjected during the two years 1922-23 and
1923-24 to the scrutiny of the Auditors, Local Fund Accounts, and in
their reports increasing attention is paid to improvements in the
accountancy system with a view to placing the institution on a sound
business footing. It is believed that the computations of the re-
presentative who examined the accounts after the close of the financial
year proved that when account was taken of excess stocks manufactured,
the expenditure of the laboratory fell substantially below the value of
the products manufactured for sale. Writing now at a date when four
months of a subsequent financial year, 1925-26, have elapsed and
demands for serum have come in to an unprecedented degree, follow-
ing upon the steady normal development of the recrudescence of rinder-
pest, one feels fairly confident that there will be a substantial margin of
profit upon the working of the laboratory for the year, and that taking
the lean years with those of abundance the Institute, regarded merely as
a business concern, is able to support itself.