18 THE LUNG PLAGUE OF CATTLE. 



"all -shifting of cattle without a clean bill of health for some months, 

 and to subject to professional examination all imported cattle, which 

 should not be lauded unless a certificate of health were given, and also 

 one presented to the officer, certifying that they had not been diseased 

 for six months before embarkation." 



Mr. Boadle's entire herd of cattle (51 head) on his home farm was 

 slaughtered and paid for, and the farm itself quarantined. No legisla- 

 tion was effected, the public apprehension subsided, and the disease was 

 allowed to gain new headway. The effect of this neglect was so disas- 

 trous that we must go into the matter somewhat more in detail. 



The Melbourne Argus of December 24, 1860, has the following : 



As to whence we received it, and how it has been spread here, there can be no doubt. 

 An imported short-horn cow brought it from England, although she was to all appear- 

 ance sound when put on board ship and during the whole of the passage. On inquiry, 

 however, after the mischief was done, it turned out that this cow had had a slight attack 

 some two years previously, of ivhlch she ivas declared, at the time, to be perfectly cured; but 

 the cure was but temporary and apparent, and the disease broke out here in a more 

 virulent form, quickly spreading to the other cattle on the same farm. Had an act 

 been then passed by the legislature to authorize the inspection of all suspected cattle, 

 the care of a few weeks or months, and the expenditure of a small sum of money, 

 would have eradicated the disease for the time, and a strict examination of all such as 

 were imported, and the requirement of proof that they had never been affected, would 

 have kept the country free from it; but our legislators were not alive to the danger; 

 and when the act is passed, which will be we presume, immediately after the meeting 

 of Parliament, the task of eradication will be a difficult and most expensive one. 



Among the cattle lately destroyed in a diseased state have been several working bullocks, 

 belonging to carriers engaged in carting supplies up the country, and bringing down wool and 

 olher produce as return loading, and in no other Way could the contagion have been more 

 quickly disseminated, mixing, as such teams do, at every stopping place with other 

 bullocks similarly employed, and frequently with the cattle belonging to the different 

 localities through which they pass. Scarcely is one small herd destroyed now before 

 fresh cases are reported, each one showing but too plainly the wide spread of the dis- 

 ease, and giving more reason to fear the announcement at any moment of its having 

 broken out in one or more of the large herds, when good-bye to the hope of eradica- 

 ting pleuro-pueumonia. 



It is further alleged that McKinnon's working oxen above alluded to 

 had been surreptitiously turned into Mr. Boadle's sequestered pastures 

 under the shadow of night, and had thus contracted the contagion. 

 Thus the petty cupidity of the teamsters brought a terrible and endless 

 disaster on that vast island, the infected oxen repeating in Australia 

 the earlier and no less disastrous experience of South Africa. 



An act of the Victorian legislature passed March 19, 1861, provided 

 for an inspection of all cattle in suspected districts, the slaughter of the 

 sick, and the interdiction of movement ; and as the disease had now ap- 

 peared at the Ovens, on the borders of New South Wales, the legisla- 

 ture of that colony passed a similar act April 11,1861. An attempt 

 was made by the latter colony to keep the disease south of Murray 

 Eiver, but the golden opportunity had been neglected; the disease car- 

 ried by working and stray cattle had been introduced into many of the 

 large herds roaming the open country, and throughout 1861 the com- 

 missioners found the malady wherever they went in both colonies. The 

 first cases observed in New South Wales were in a large herd at Yar- 

 ra Yarra, which had been moved by its owners, Messrs. M'Laurin, from 

 Mitta Mitta, Victoria, in August, 1861. Yet in January, 1862, the New 

 South Wales commissioners report that they had examined 100,000, and 

 in every herd, with one or two exceptions, they had found the disease. 

 In Victoria matters were worse if possible, and by midsummer, 1862, it 

 is reported that in that colony " whole hecatombs of infected and sus- 

 pected cattle have been burned and destroyed." It is estimated that 

 up to 1873, 1,404,097, or 40 per cent, of the cattle of the island, perished, 



