( 248- ) | April; 
CHRONICLES OF SCIENCE. 
I. AGRICULTURE. 
Tus Carrie Pracue.—This has continued the overwhelming 
interest of the past quarter in the agricultural world. Advancing 
for many weeks at a very rapidly increasing rate, and having attamed 
a fatality of about 1,500 cases daily, it has latterly been stationary ; 
and we hope it is at length feeling the influence of the means 
which have been employed for its prevention and restriction. The 
Cattle Plague Act requires the immediate slaughter of affected 
animals, and permits the local authorities to destroy those which, 
having been in contact with the plague, may be supposed to have 
become infected. The rapid breeding and spread of the poison are 
thus at length in some measure stopped; and we may hope with 
some confidence that the hitherto rapid extension of the plague has 
been checked. Every other method than the pole-axe for this pur- 
pose has hitherto been a failure. Vaccination, on which some hope 
had been built, was found to be no security whatever: and every 
published cure has hitherto, on sufficient test being applied, proved 
to be fallacious. Acids, alkalies, and salts have all been fairly tried, 
and all found wanting. Sulphuric acid, sulphates, and sulphites, 
hydrochloric acid, common salt, lime, salts of iron, sulphur, and a 
variety of drugs have all proved ineffectual. Mr. Worms, a coffee 
lanter of Ceylon, who imagined the disease to be the same as he 
had often treated successfully in that island, confidently recom- 
mended, onions and assafoetida in certain doses as a cure; and it has 
been largely tried, but without success. Baron Rothschild’s herd 
at Mentmore was rapidly succumbing to the plague, notwithstand- 
ing Mr. Worms’ treatment, when the experiment was at length cut 
short by the intervention of the law for slaughtering affected 
animals. Homesopathic treatment seems, according to the published 
tables, to have achieved a larger proportion of success than any 
other. But everybody knows the extreme untrustworthiness of 
any general conclusion on this subject built upon an insufficient 
basis of examples. Meanwhile, the fatality of the disease, which, 
on its first appearance, was extreme, and is still extraordinary, has 
been gradually diminishmg. ‘The recovery rate, which was only 
5 per cent. in October, and 6 per cent.in November, over the whole 
number of cases reported since the beginning, had risen to 11 per 
cent. in the third week in January, and stood at 12-146 per cent. 
on February 3, 12°364 per cent. on February 10, 12°680 per cent, 
