THE FOOT-AND-MOUTH DISEASE. 247 



returns had been received from most of the municipal author- 

 ities within whose limits the disease had existed, that infected 

 places had been purified and everything supposed to be capable 

 of spreading the distemper properly disposed of. The Board 

 being satisfied of the fact, all restrictions against the free 

 driving and transportation of all kinds of neat stock were 

 removed the first of May, and this important branch of our 

 trade and thrift at once and with confidence resumed its accus- 

 tomed channels. 



This disease has for many years ravaged and scourged several 

 European countries, causing annually an enormous loss of 

 property, and is raging there at the present time with great 

 virulence ; but not a case of it, to our knowledge, has occurred 

 in this country since the 20th of last April, and it is to be hoped 

 that it is effectually eradicated. If such shall prove to be the 

 fact, the cost of carrying out the regulations of the Commission- 

 ers and the quite general interruption of the usual trade and 

 profit of this business for a limited time, will be of no account 

 when compared with the benefit of the results. It is a very 

 noticeable and important fact that notwithstanding the contin- 

 ued prevalence of this contagion in England for many years, 

 with the exception of a short period when the movement of 

 cattle was prohibited in consequence of the existence of a more 

 deadly plague, that it should apparently have been entirely sup- 

 pressed here within six months of its first outbreak. 



It is not impossible that our drier, warmer summer climate 

 may have had £ome influence on its poisonous propagating and 

 virulent properties, though we know of no record of cases 

 abroad of greater malignity than some observed by us in the 

 towns of Stow and Bolton. Whatever change, if any, climate 

 may have produced in the type of the disease in other respects, 

 its extremely contagious character was fully developed ; and that 

 we have been able to control and suppress it is undoubtedly 

 owing to the fact that we have laws framed to meet such an 

 emergency. The wisdom of these statutory enactments has 

 been abundantly demonstrated at two important junctures: 

 first, in lhG7, on the breaking out of the Spanish fever, and 

 now, in the foot-and-mouth disease. 



There is no reasonable doubt but that if such laws had existed 

 here at the time the contagious pleuro pneumonia was imported 



