The Cattle-Plague. 251 



it has never been known to attack any other domesticated 

 animal," is certainly at variance with our knowledge now, 

 although it was in conformity with the view expressed in 1857 

 by Professor SiMONDS. We are indebted to Dr. Crisp for having 

 publicly stated that goats readily develop the ferment, and that in 

 this country a zebu, a mouffler, a deer, and two species of antelopes 

 have succumbed to it. Mr. BoULEY, of the Alfort Veterinary 

 School, has furnished a description of occurrences at the Jardin 

 d'Acclimisation, Paris,* which incontestably prove the vague term 

 applied to this epidemic to be a misnomer, for the contagion 

 introduced by two gazelles imported from London spread to 43 

 animals, zebus, goats, antelopes, stags, Virginian deer, musk-deer, 

 yacks, aurocks, and peccaries, which died of the poison, or were 

 killed. The facts concerning the peccaries must cause additional 

 anxiety on account of the similarity of the visceral anatomy of 

 that animal and the pig. 



For some time the reports affecting the liability of sheep 

 were discredited. The wish being father to the thought, the 

 disbelief in this additional and unexpected calamity was very 

 natural. Professor SlilONDS was one of the first, I believe, to 

 recognise the fact that cattle-plague might be transmitted from 

 the ox to the sheep, and back to the ox. The cases in the East 

 of England confirmed his view, which, though much contested, 

 has unhappily been substantiated by many other instances. The 

 medical commissions of Norfolk and Edinburgh, while they 

 confess the sheep to be less disposed to receive contagion than 

 oxen, place the fact of liability beyond question ; and it Avill be 

 seen that Professor SlBlONDS, in the paper read before the Royal 

 Agricultural Society (Feb. 21), that of 23 flocks in various parts 

 of the country, comprising 3948 sheep, 2265 had died, and this 

 within the last few months. An Order by the Belgian Govern- 

 ment, dated 12th October, forbidding the entrance into that 

 kingdom of sheep from Holland, where the pest was then raging, 

 shows them to have been thoroughly aware of the danger. It is a 

 matter for regret — and the circumstance has been observed in 

 Austria as well as England — that there is no mitigation of the 

 disease when the inoculating virus is taken from sheep and passed 

 back to cattle. 



Finally, as to the infectious nature of the cattle-plague. It 

 has been said that a pocket-handkerchief once impregnated with 

 the virus of small-pox, and carried round the world, will convey 

 the disease after a lapse of ten years. This testimony applies 

 C[uite as fully to the viras of rinderpest, which, beyond this 

 astonishing vitality, is swift and subtle in the highest degree. 



* ' L'Union Medicale,' Jan. 6, 1866. 



