1866. | ( 383 ) 
CHRONICLES OF SCIENCE. 
I. AGRICULTURE. 
Tue gradual decline of the cattle plague during the past 
quarter has amply justified those measures of repression and 
restriction which had been enacted at the date of our last publica- 
tion, and to which we then alluded. The latest report of the 
Commissioners appointed to investigate the subject points out that, 
up to the date of the Act which authorized the compulsory 
slaughter of infected cattle, the fatality of the disease was con- 
stantly creasing ; but that, after that date, it at once commenced 
a continual decline which has since been almost regularly main- 
tained. This diminution has not only been coincident with the action 
of the new restrictive measures, but runs a course closely parallel to 
the operation of the most important of those measures—compulsory 
slaughter. “Rigid and systematic means of disinfection,’ “ un- 
sparing strictness and unremitting watchfulness,” will alone, in the 
opinion of the Commissioners, be sufficient to extirpate the disease, 
and when these measures have been successful, there will still 
remain the duty of guarding against its re-introduction. A few 
cases have been reported in the north of Ireland; but the rigid 
isolation of the infected spot appears hitherto to have prevented its 
extension there. The hability to its re-importation is, however, 
strikingly illustrated by the Irish experience, and this will, we 
fear, necessitate a constant and increasingly careful inspection at all 
those points of debarkation at which we now receive our supplies of 
foreign cattle. This, combined with either quarantine or im- 
mediate slaughter, will be necessary; for the complete investigation 
of the subject, which a quarter of a million of cases has forced upon 
us, only deepens the conviction that no remedy exists for the 
malady when once the poison has been received. The Commis- 
sioners inform us that all forms of medicinal treatment have been 
equally successful, and all have been equally unsuccessful. The 
regulation of diet has, however, been serviceable—“ judicious feed- 
ing with soft mashes of digestible food has tended to increase the 
proportion of recoveries. And it is a noteworthy circumstance, that 
the proportion of recoveries is larger in the case of small herds 
than in that of large flocks, thus pointing out how much may be 
done by careful nursing and individual attention.” ‘“ Among 
cottagers’ cattle, generally fed on mashed food, the recoveries were 
73 per cent.; in large stocks, where dry food has been given 
