Report on Steppe Murrain or Ririderpcst. 229 



when, about the second or third week of the month, the disease 

 broke out again with great fierceness, spread rapidly among the 

 cattle in the depot and in the town, reached a second acme about 

 the termination of the month, declined during December, and 

 ceased altogether in January, 1856." 



Among many others, also, Mr. Walton Mayer, V.S. to the 

 *' Royal Engineer Field Equipment," who was, duiing the war, 

 attached to the Land Transport Corps, speaks of the existence 

 of the disease in several parts of Turkey, and in the immediate 

 neighbourhood of Constantinople, in the summer of 1855. Early 

 in the same year, in consequence of a considerable part of both 

 Austrian and Russian Poland having become the seat of the 

 disease, much apprehension was shown lest it should cross the 

 Prussian frontier. To prevent this the Prussian Government 

 took the precaution of sending detachments of troops to all the 

 points of egress below Thorn, with a view of cutting off the 

 communication with the infected localities. 



Baron Schleinitz, President of the department of Bromberg, 

 in the province of Posen, in his official report, says, that " it 

 was in the month of March, 1855, that we were obliged to order 

 the frontier to be closed, which was first effected in pursuance 

 <jf the directions in section 2 of the law of 1836. In October 

 of the same year Ave were under the necessity, in consequence of 

 the threatening approach of danger, of putting into force the 

 severer directions of section 3 respecting the closing of the 

 irontier ; and when, at the end of that month, intelligence, 

 though not officially confirmed, arrived here regarding the pro- 

 gress of the murrain, we caused the Polish district bordering 

 upon our department to be thoroughly investigated by the vete- 

 rinary surgeon of our department within a distance of three miles 

 from the boundary of our territory." 



" It l)eing then ascertained that the disease was only 2^ miles 

 from our frontier, we determined, at the beginning of November, 

 to close the same still more strictly, according to section 4 of the 

 said law. At the same time we ordered the district commissaries 

 of police to inform the mayors of the different places of the im- 

 pending calamity, who were not only instructed to exhort the 

 inhabitants of their districts to use the greatest precaution, but 

 also to give immediate notice, per express, to the Counsellor of 

 Administration of the district of every suspicious case of disease 

 breaking out among the cattle. As a further warning and in- 

 struction to the public, we caused copies of the circular which 

 was issued by the chief magistrate of our province, under the 

 date of 28th of January, 1845, to be printed and distributed, to 

 which we annexed a description of the symptoms of the disease, 

 and caused the same to be distributed as a supplement to our 



VOL. XVIII. K 



