COMMISSIONEK OF AGRICULTURE 305 



ease, however, infected cattle were themselves shipped direct from 

 one market to the other, passing by rail over the intervening 400 

 miles in the course of the night. Jn Cope's case of the aphthous 

 fever it was manifestly indirect contagion through intermediate 

 bearers of infection, cars, litter, buckets, dealers' linen coats and 

 overalls, or other object. 



Our English brethren have been tardy to a fault in reaching an 

 appreciation of the perils of mediate contagion, having for 50 

 years held obstinately to a doctrine of contagion by direct contact 

 only of the sick living animal with a susceptible living animal, 

 in the case of lung plague, which they thus maintained on the 

 island for practically GO years (1839-1898). 



A ulance at their methods of veterinary sanitary police adminis- 

 traiion at that time shows at once loopholes through which infec- 

 tion can often escape to keep up a communicable disease, though 

 on paper it appears to have been placed under rigid restrictions. 

 The administration of the work long lay in the hands of the local 

 magistrate, and while one district might have as an inspector an 

 accomplished, able and painstaking veterinarian, the next had a 

 constable, butcher, or political dependent, who knew nothing of 

 pathology or sanitary work. Even when a given area was quaran- 

 tined by the Board of Agriculture, the value of such quarantine 

 was minimized by the bestowal of licenses which were too often 

 incompatible with any effective isolation of the infected area. 

 The movement of animals under license by the local authority was 

 permitted, which in an extensively infected area i- always unsafe, 

 and doubly so when every herd had not been registered by indi- 

 viduals, and marked and kept under close supervision for a suffi- 

 cient length of time to cover the period of latency and to make 

 sure that no illness or death had occurred. Xo public nor private 

 sales were allowed under the general orders, but the local 

 authorities could license such sales under the following restric- 

 tions: (1) All animals shown must be marked; (2) all animals 

 must be killed within <i days; (3) they mu-t not lie exposed in a 

 second sale in the interval; and (4) The seller mu-t testify that 

 bis place had been free from aphthous fever and that all animals 

 shown had been on bis place for the preceding 4 days. Apart 

 from the risk of blunders and false evidence in snch cases, there is 

 the obvious mistake of allowing these animals, to go to and from 



