480 REPORT ON THE TRANSIT OF STOCK. 



there is little doubt that the transit of stock might be greatly 

 hastened by a little management ; but unless the matter is a very 

 glaring one they are difficult to reach, and we would rather pro- 

 pose a legislative enactment, such as that a train (principally for 

 the accommodation of stock), regulated as to time, shall be run 

 each way every day, and with suitable penalties for shortcomings. 

 Until stock traffic is separated from ordinary goods traffic, so as- 

 to be freed from the delays incidental to the latter, we fear there 

 will be little amendment in this matter ; but considering the large 

 development of the cattle trade of the country, it does not seem 

 that one train per day, each way, would be too much to ask for it- 

 There are several minor evils of this system ; such as the 

 damage the animals sometimes inflict on each other, but they 

 require little notice, and we therefore proceed to what may be 

 truly called the great evils of this mode of transit, viz., exposure,, 

 hunger, and thirst. All three are caused by the form of the truck 

 in which the animals are carried. These trucks are generally 

 of two forms ; the simplest having the sides and ends boarded 

 up to four feet from the floor, with two or three rails covered 

 round the top ; the others have in addition the ends carried 

 up to the top, and a light roof over them. In the open trucks, it 

 needs little argument to prove that the animals suffer extremely 

 from cold ; one look at them after a night journey in winter 

 will convince the most sceptical, and even in summer it is too- 

 much for them. In the covered trucks they are much more 

 comfortable, but still they suffer from the tremendous draught 

 that rushes through the open sides of these trucks during transit. 

 As a remedy for the evil of exposure, we propose, taking the 

 ordinary form of truck as a model, to have the two ends boarded 

 up to the top, the upper half of the sides to have movable 

 louvre boards, which admit of being regulated according to the 

 necessities of ventilation, and that may be turned either way to 

 suit the direction in which the truck is moving, the lower half 

 of the sides to be boarded, and along the top, which must have a 

 roof, a ventilator with louvre openings, thus placing the whole 

 ventilation of the truck under complete control, and mitigating 

 very perceptibly the evils of exposure, which in general terms 

 may be stated as the loss of condition and inflammatory colds. 



The questions of food and water come next, and are unfor- 

 tunately more difficult to deal with. There always will be a 

 class, probably, which can pretty well dispense with these requi- 

 sites, such as are not to be in the trucks longer than eight or ten 

 hours, and fat stock perhaps a little longer ; still the great bulk 

 of stock do require attention very urgently in these matters. So 

 far as we are aware, there are no statistics in existence showing 

 the loss of weight which stock suffer during a railway journey,, 

 or the colds, inflammation^ and other ills engendered by its pri- 



