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made no provision for action, in the event of the introduction of the cattle plague- 

 That paper, of February 3, says : 



" The order in council with reference to the cattle plague in Ireland, which 

 was issued last Saturday, requires that, on the occurrence of the cattle plague on 

 any farm, the lord lieutenant shall be informed by telegraph, and shall there- 

 upon immediately despatch an inspector with the ordnance map in his hand, 

 upon which he shall there and then draw a line of isolation around the infected 

 farm or district, which line is to be licpt by the county constabulary, and no 

 domestic animal is to be allowed to cross it until twenty-eight days after the 

 disappearance of the disease. Why has not a measure of this kind long since 

 been adopted here V 



We here see that, after all the experience of Great Britain, the only hope of 

 staying the disease is by a resort to the German mode of establishing a " cordon.' 

 In September last we gave our preference to this way of meeting the disease, 

 believing, as we then did, and still do, that, for all purposes, the disease should be 

 regarded as most fatal, and as incurable as fatal. 



Accounts are going the rounds of the press that vaccination is a preventive ; 

 that is, the cow-pox, from which we originally obtained our vaccine matter, is a 

 safeguai-d against the rinderpest. The following action in Aberdeenshire, and 

 the opinion of Dr. Murchison, show the little reliance to be placed in this vac- 

 cination. The extract we take from the paper just referred to : 



" The 300 deaths per diem from the cattle plague, in Cheshire, have doubled 

 in a fortnight. Upwards of 5,000 fresh cases and 4,270 deaths took place last 

 week. The disease has reappeared in Aberdeenshire ; and the whole stock of 

 the farm was immediately purchased for the county association, killed, and 

 buried five feet deep. Although Mr. Tollemache still maintains his faith in 

 vaccination, notwithstanding that some at least of his stock have sickened, yet 

 its powers as a preventive have already been disproved. One of the recent 

 cases in the north is indeed stated to have been just recovering from cow-pox of 

 the natural kind when she was attacked by rinderpest." 

 And Dr. Murchison writes as follows to the Times : 



" The points of resemblance between cattle plague and small-pox are so strik- 

 ing that certain observers were led to hope that vaccination might protect cattle 

 from the prevailing disease. The experiment, I believe, has now been fairly 

 and fully tried ; and, although the first accounts appeared favorable, there is 

 sufficient evidence that vaccination confers no permanent protection from the 

 plague. It is Avell that this fact should be generally known by publication in 

 the Times. Rigid isolation, and the suspension of all movement of living cattle, 

 must still be the preventive measures on which we mainly rely." 



The legislation now demanded of Congress and the States is to provide for 

 the most complete and rigid isolation wherever the disease may appear ; to 

 authorize county associations to purchase the cattle of an infected farm, and 

 destroy and bury them ; and to enforce the observance of any preventive that 

 future trial may show is effectual. 



