THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



13 



periment as sufficiently conclusive not to be tempted to 

 renew it. 



M. Renault has finished this interesting communica- 

 tion, by demonstrating the weakness of the fears of 

 England, in the actual state of the typhoid epizootie in 

 Europe. In his estimation the measure taken by the 

 British Government has no serious foundation. The 

 disease which prevails at this moment in Holland, 

 Hanover, Mecklenburg, and Denmark, is the peri- 

 pneumonia (contagious) ; which also is found in France, 

 and from which Great Britain is herself far from being 

 exempt. 



As to the typhus, it is neither more nor less to be 

 feared now in England than it was one, or two, or six 

 years ago ; since there are few years in which it does 

 not prevail in Poland, or in some part or other of 

 Russia in the neighbourhood of the Baltic, so as to be 

 at any moment prevalent in parts far enough removed 

 from the provinces of Southern Russia, from whence 

 English commerce obtains so many hides and so much 

 tallow. Now, England has not for a long period adopted 

 sanitary measures against animal productions of Russia ; 



and yet those productions have not imported the bovine 

 plague amongst the English cattle. M. Renault is con- 

 vinced that the English Administration, when better 

 informed, will soon rescind the rather precipitate mea- 

 sures it has recently adopted. 



Finally, he adds that this measure is so much the less 

 considerate that it is now proved that tanned leather, 

 hides dried in the air, and melted tallow, the produce of 

 animals infected with typhus, have never imported the 

 disease. 



We regret being unable to give more than an analysis, 

 necessarily incomplete and distorted, of the clear and 

 elegant extempore address, which during an hour cap - 

 tivated the attention of the assembly. 



M. Yvart has completed the communication of M. 

 Renault, by adding some new details, and by a spirited 

 critique on an official note of the English Government, 

 in which they have given the premonitory symptoms of 

 the disease, which'are nothing more than an inexplicable 

 melange of the symptoms of three or four very dif- 

 ferent disorders. (Signed) 



Victor Borie. 



THE RUMOURED MURRAIN AMONGST CATTLE. 



The dove has returned with the olive-branch in its 

 mouth. The officer of the guard has been his rounds, 

 and reports ''All's well." The cry of "Wolf" is a 

 mere cry, and nothing more. It really comes very much 

 to this. All for our common good, and very much to 

 our general satisfaction, has Professor Simonds been 

 roughing it. For the last month or two has this learned 

 gentleman been living upon schnapps and sour bread, 

 and sleeping ten or twelve in a bed. And, all to keep 

 the breeders, and feeders, and agriculturists of the 

 United Kingdom out of liarm's way. As the repre- 

 sentative of the National Societies of England, Ireland, 

 and Scotland, he has been ti-avelling in search of a 

 grievance. As such, he has been duly honoured and 

 aided wherever he went ; and he appears certainly to 

 have made the most of his time. Every ambassador 

 and minister of almost every state, in what is generally 

 received as Continental Europe, has vied in furthering 

 the Professor's object, and almost as invariably with 

 the least possible success or effect. We have been 

 anxiously awaiting here a whole budget of horrors and 

 calamities. We have been expecting a something that 

 it would tax the powers of Times-Russell to depict. 

 We have been vivifying a scene of desolation and dis- 

 tress that must be taken only as the type of what is to 

 happen to ourselves. And, lo ! the Professor returns, 

 like Mr. Canning's celebrated knife-grinder. In an- 

 swer to all our eager inquiries, he has no grievance to 

 talk over. After, perhaps, his rural life in Prussia, 

 " his hat may have a hole in it — so may his breeches" 

 — but " story. Lord bless you, sir ! he has none to tell 

 you." When Professor Simonds started on his mission, 

 it appears Professor Dick, of the Edinburgh College, 

 declared that it would be a difficult thing to find any 



case of murrain at all. And so it has been. Mr. 

 Simonds has traversed all the dangerous ground, and 

 it really seems very doubti'ul whether he has actually 

 seen anything so formidable, as to be worthy of the 

 name or import of what we recognize here as the cattle 

 murrain. 



Let us add the strongest possible commentary on this 

 very complacent conclusion. We believe that no man 

 could have done his duty better. If the lecture Pro- 

 fessor Simonds delivered on Wednesday last to the 

 Members of the Royal Agricultural Society was weak 

 or illogical in any point, it was in this : — It evinced an 

 almost over anxiety to fulfil its mission. Mr. Simonds 

 appeared to think with Columbus, that if he returned 

 without finding what he went to seek, he would be but 

 badly i-eceived on his return. And so he laboured on until 

 he came to the object of all his hopes in a little out-of- 

 the-way, far distant, place in Prussia. Hei'e the disease, 

 or the mui'rain, or the Rinder-pest had been introduced, 

 and here only was it likely to remain. There is no 

 man sent so effectually lo Coventry amongst our Con- 

 tinental friends as the unlucky wight who is known to 

 have anything wrong amongst his stock. They com- 

 municate with him afar off. They draw a cordon 

 around him ; and for weeks and months are he and his 

 outcasts from amongst the people. Our Professor 

 himself had a narrow escape of leaving this tabooed 

 ground with barely a rag on. 



Let it not, then, be supposed that we have been over 

 cautious or hasty in what we have done. Compared 

 with our friends on the other side of the water, we are 

 the most hap-hazard and indifferent set of people under 

 the sun. We may, certainly, have thousand-guinea 

 Shorthoi'ns and hundred-guinea Southdowns, but we 



