Rinderpest Precautions and Remedies. 61 



stock were subjected to the same treatment, but never allowed to 

 leave the shippons. Hence, in spite of a severe attack of the 

 plague on several farms in the vicinity of the Tatton Home 

 Farm, they all escaped, while some of the West Highland bullocks 

 in the park went down. Chlorine gas was quite the fashion in 

 Cheshire, and as farmers were very "jealous " of contagion, every 

 rural policeman carried, at the suggestion of Professor Stone, 

 a wooden kit with him, as well as a waterproof bag, for disinfect- 

 ing his dress. The kit had four compartments for bottles of 

 muriatic acid, chlorate of potash, Stockholm tar, and "soap and 

 sundries." The two former generate chlorine gas by contact, and 

 a iew drops of the tar poured upon some hot cinders will dis- 

 infect boots or clogs when suspended on a poker within reach of 

 its vapour. The inspection dress is made of strong calico and 

 fashioned like a diver's, and it is fumigated and made ready for 

 the next visit by putting it into the bag along with a perforated 

 box in which chlorine gas has been generated and retained on 

 pumice stone. 



Mr. Davies' shippon is at the junction of three roads leading 

 to Chester, Warrington, and Knutsford, and in the centre of 

 a district through which the plague wended the same fatal way 

 that it did in the last century — commencing near Warrington 

 and coming along the low ground. In the small township of 

 Tabley alone 662 beasts died ; 41 were slaughtered, and only 

 20 per cent, were left. It skipped some farms and attacked 

 others, and it would sometimes in its later stages take one cow 

 and return to the same herd for another victim at the lapse of three 

 weeks. Cleanliness was of no avail, and some of the very worst 

 kept shippons escaped. Mr. Davies's precautionary efforts were 

 unintermitting from the first. Every beast about the place was 

 vaccinated ; hyposulphite of soda, beginning at 3 lbs. and so on 

 to 5 lbs., was mixed for four or five months in 100 gallons of 

 water ; and chlorine gas was used night and day in the shippon. 

 Sawdust was substituted for straw, in consequence of its absorbing 

 ih.e fceces better, and being so much more easily removed. The 

 cattle were never more blooming than when they were turned out 

 in the middle of May, for a few hours daily, into a field adjoining 

 the shippon and abutting on the high road. There was no 

 infected farm nearer than a mile, but at the end of three weeks 

 an Alderney heifer was taken ill and died in 36 hours. She had 

 no symptom of illness about her except a slight discharge from 

 the vagina, and until the veterinary surgeon opened her, he 

 thought she was ruptured. The bull by which she had been 

 recently served was slaughtered immediately, but there was no 

 arresting the evil, and in two days more nine or ten were down 

 with it. Leonora, from Mr. Jolly's, was the first decided case, 



