OF THE OX. 107 



mind, which is so excitable in England, did not 

 disguise the indignation it felt against foreign 

 countries which had been capable of contami- 

 nating an island so advantageously situated 

 and so well protected, and infecting her mag- 

 nificent herds, exuberant with health. But 

 after a closer examination of the facts, and 

 possibly alarmed, at the serious consequences of 

 a Continental blockade which would deprive the 

 United Kingdom, not of the entire twenty or 

 thirty thousand live stock, such as oxen, sheep, 

 pigs, &c., which they receive every week, but 

 only of the eight or ten thousand head of cattle 

 which are landed weekly on their coasts to 

 supply their markets, public opinion was ap- 

 peased. But, unfortunately, this national sus- 

 ceptibility now took the opposite extreme ; and 

 the only causes it now saw were the dirt and 

 want of adequate ventilation in the metropoli- 

 tan stables and sheds ; and to these causes it 

 attributed, first the generation, and then the 

 propagation or diffusion of the malady; an 

 opinion which appeared all the more natural 

 and reasonable, in that the oxen and cows of the 

 graziers were the first victims of the typhus. 

 We all know how liable, among all nations, 



