1866. | Fe 
CHRONICLES OF SCIENCE. 
I. AGRICULTURE. 
Tue whole agricultural interest of the quarter has centred in the 
progress of the cattle plague, to which reference is made in another 
page. We add to the details there given that the number of the 
new cases reported to the Veterinary Department of the Privy 
Council, which was only a few hundreds weekly in the early part of 
autumn, reached 2,600 in the week ending November 18th, 3,600 in 
the week ending November 25th, 3,800 in the week ending Decem- 
ber 2nd, and upwards of 5,000 in the week ending December 9th. 
We do not know how local fears may have exaggerated in the 
instances out of which these aggregates arise; but any discount 
which such a consideration as this might justify is more than 
balanced by the large number of cases in which losses by the plague 
are concealed, in order to escape the exercise of the stringent powers 
which have been vested in imspectors. 
No treatment, allopathic, hydropathic, or homceopathic, has 
been hitherto successful. The proportion of recoveries has not 
been influenced by any cause which has yet been put in operation, 
though no doubt good nursing must help the patient through when 
the vital energy would otherwise be barely overcome. 
In connection with the cattle disease and the London cow- 
houses, where it first appeared, a paper on London Milk has been 
read by Mr. Morton before the Society of Arts, in which he declares 
that, coming to the examination of the subject with the prejudices 
of a countryman that London cowhouses are an abomination, that 
Londoners are ill fed with milk, and that the right way to supply 
a town with milk is to bring it in from the country,—he has come 
round to the conclusion that London cowhouses need not be a 
nuisance, that London is better fed with milk than the average of 
south country villages, and that the right way to ensure a supply of 
good milk to any considerable body of people is to have it produced 
as near as may be to their own doors. The analyses made by 
Dr. Voelcker, for the purpose of this paper, prove that the milk 
consumed in London is very much diluted, but they also prove that 
water is the only diluent employed, and that all the stories about 
chalk and “brains” and mucilage of various kinds are fiction. The 
difficulty connected with a supply of milk to London from the 
country arises out of the extreme facility with which milk sours 
and becomes offensive in hot weather. The ordinary milk-can 
carried on an ordinary railway truck is not to be depended on for 
