ON FEVERS AMONGST HOUSES, CATTLE, ETC. 243 



insufficiently transformed blood material, and in the second 

 probably the direct transmission of the virus from the herbage 

 upon which the animals subsist. From this cause tlie writer 

 has witnessed several outbreaks of disease on marshy lands, and 

 where previously for years anthrax has been known to occur at 

 such periods. 



Soil. — It is generally accepted as a difficult question to state 

 where anthrax diseases do not occur in the United Kingdom. 

 They are common to every county, yet there are localities in 

 each where some of the forms are never seen, but this is not such 

 a surprising fact when we enter into a lengthened examination of 

 the numerous causes. The following extract from a Parlia- 

 mentary report interestingly sets forth the general distribution of 

 anthrax in Britain : — ''' 



" In Great Britain and Ireland anthrax is the most fatal of all 

 enzootic disorders, spreading Avidely over the richest pasturesof fer- 

 tile valleys on the Old or New Eed Sandstone formations; on the 

 soil over the Lias of Somerset and Gloucester, on the crag forms 

 of Norfolk and Suffolk, on the compact soil of the Oxford Clay in 

 Oxfordshire, Wilts, and the county of Lincoln. In the counties 

 of Edinburgh and Haddington we find it particularly prevalent, 

 stretching from Dalkeith to the Lammermuir Hills; indeed, in 

 the south of Scotland along the whole tract of Cambrian and 

 Silurian rocks. The hills of Scotland and the pastures of great 

 fertility intervening between them teem with cattle and sheep, 

 amongst which there is a heavy mortality from the different 

 forms of anthrax. The black-quarter of cattle, which is one of 

 the worst characteristic forms of the disease, prevails to a great 

 extent on the Old Eed Sandstone of the counties of Ayr, Stirling, 

 Perth, Forfar, and Kincardine. It is even seen in the same 

 formation in the eastern portions of Banff, Inverness, and Caith- 

 ness. It is common also in Kincardine and Aberdeen, prevailing, 

 perhaps, as much in the Lower Silurian of the latter county, as 

 on the same formation in Peebleshire and Berwickshire, and on 

 the Igneous rocks of Eenfrew and Kinross. Though I have here 

 mentioned most of the formations on which the various forms of 

 anthrax prevail, I must not omit to mention its ready develop- 

 ment on the clays of Midlothian, Linlithgow, Lanark, and 

 Eenfrew. The soils on the Coal Measures, where not well drained, 

 are also favourable to the development of anthrax in cattle ; and 

 although it may seem puzzling to state where carbuncular diseases 

 do not occur, still it will be found not to occur to any great 

 extent on the thin soil of the ITpper Chalk, on the sand soils over 

 the Greensand, on the MiUstone Grit and Magnesian Limestone. 

 Where the latter formations occur in Durham, Yorkshire, Derby- 



" Eeport on the. Diseases of Live Stock, by Professor John Gamgee, in the 

 Fifth Eeport of the Medical Officer of the Privy T'ouneil, 1862. 



