252 The Cattle-Plaijiic. 



Thoiigli it seems to depend upon animal life for its development, 

 it by no means does so for its conveyance from place to place. 

 Where the g-onth? breeze and the running brook will not convey 

 it, all living- things become its involuntary carriers. Flies, farm- 

 vermin, birds, cats, and dogs, the higher quadrupeds and man, 

 transport it from place to place, either internally or externally. 

 It finds a hiding-place in hay and straw, and in articles of 

 merchandise passes the frontiers of contiguous countries, and 

 crosses the sea from one continent to another.* Nothing seems 

 to kill it save purging flame or torrid hoat.t It is carted into the 

 field with the inanure, and, though buried beneath the furrow, 

 is said to retain its malignity for many years. | Doubts are also 

 expressed lest it may not pass with the rain-water to the under- 

 drains, and from them to the feeding-troughs of the cattle which 

 these so frequently supply. Scattered upon ground exposed to 

 the sun's rays, it is highly probable that, like other forms of 

 miasmata, the virus of the cattle-plague may be drawn vqo with 

 the earth-vapour, blown in the cloud, and discharged upon some 

 region distant from the point of ascent. Unless under the 

 impulse of wind, the atmosphere will not convey it more than a 

 few hundred yards. The air about thirty yards from a fever 

 patient is said to be harmless; but Professor SiMOXDS extends 

 this distance in the case of cattle-plague to 500 yards ; in which 

 case it may be supposed that the virus is too much diluted, or 

 sinks by its own gravity to the ground before it attains the dis- 

 tance from the ejecting source. 



It is observable that when this virus escapes from Russia, 

 like that of small-pox, it attacks the denizens of a new soil with 

 fourfold the virulence it does the race which, according to some, 

 gave it birth. Within the region of the Steppes the mortality 

 ranges from 45 to 50 per cent. In Poland, according to the 

 official communication of Brigadier-General ManSFIELD, in 

 1857, about 50 per cent. When it reaches Hungary the 

 mortality rises to G5 per cent. ; while with ourselves and 

 the Dutch it reaches as high as 90 per cent. As it spreads 

 to the north and west, the poison works with greater avidity, 

 slumbering in the heats of summer, and awaking to fresh 

 activity during the rigorous winter. Consul-General WHITE, 



* ' We have just received intelligence of an outbreak of this malignant fever in 

 Americii.' — ' Times,' INIarch 7. 



t Ur. Kemp, in his ' Natural History of Creation,' says that a temperature of 

 ISU-" etfectually destroys the virus of continued fever. Rinderpest, however, 

 raged in Egypt in the presence of a greater heat. I regret that I have not been 

 able to consult for this paper Dr. Ogilvie's Report to the Pacha of Egypt on the 

 fierce attack -which carried off the cattle of that country. 



X Dr. VoELCKEK, entertaining a high opinion of the disinfecting power of soil, 

 thinks otherwise. 



