208 Report on Steppe Murrain or Rinderpest. 



freedom or otherwise from contagious diseases. With the ex- 

 ception of plemo-pneumonia and eczema, no other affection 

 prevails among the cattle. Rinderpest has had no existence for 

 upwards of forty years, and is unknown even to the veterinary pro- 

 fession except by name. The parts of the country most affected 

 with pleuro-pneumonia at this time are North Holland and 

 Friesland. By a statistical return from forty-three villages in 

 North Holland and Friesland it is shown that only eight of them 

 have been comparatively free from pleuro-pneumonia, and in 

 those but very few cattle are kept. In the villages where the 

 disease has prevailed, about a fifth part only of the cattle-owners 

 have escaped upon the whole, but in many every propiietor has 

 had his herd affected. In the first quarter of the present year 

 the official returns show a total loss of 3655 head of cattle, of 

 which 1502 died and 2153 were killed by order of the authorities, 

 which gives an average loss of about 281 per week. We are not 

 surprised at the great extent of these losses, judging from what 

 we saw of the secondary causes of epizootics in operation in the 

 vicinity of Rotterdam. The cattle are often crowded into houses 

 so thickly that to pass between them is almost an impossibility, 

 while the form and size of the building will frequently allow of a 

 passage only to be made by a person along its centre, where the 

 heads of the animals nearly meet over their feeding-troughs, the 

 height being likewise insufficient to stand upright in. No windows 

 exist in many of these sheds, nor any other inlet for light and air 

 except the door. The heat is almost suffocating, and the stench 

 abominable. In such unwholesome and pest-breeding places as 

 these, the cattle, often to the extent of forty to fifty in a shed, are 

 kept for weeks together to be fatted for the market, by being fed 

 chiefly on the wash and grains which come from the distilleries. 



The cattle which are sent from Friesland are shipped at Haar- 

 lingen direct for England, and the numbers put on board there 

 are fully six times greater than at Amsterdam. Friesland is one 

 of the great cattle-districts of Holland, and supplies not only the 

 English market with many animals, but other countries likewise. 

 She therefore receives no imports, nor does it appear that any of 

 the vessels conveying cattle from the ports of the Elbe, or the 

 Weser, or from any part of the coast of Holstein, ever touch at 

 the Dutch ports, so that a contagious malady like Rinderpest, 

 existing in Holstein or in the countries watered by those rivers, 

 would have to make its way by land into Holland. 



No restrictions are put upon the cattle-trade with reference to 

 the bringing of animals over the frontier, but all importations of 

 the kind would be immediately prohibited on the appearance of 

 the disease in question in any neighbouring states. The prices 

 obtained for cattle in the English market are not viewed as being 



