128 CONTAGIOUS DISEASES OF DOMESTICATED ANIMALS. 



the anirual production iu Western Europe remains stationary, or even 

 diminishes. This imperious demand for beef, and the facility for its sup- 

 ply by cheap railway transport from the East, cannot fail to insure an 

 increase of tlie Eastern traffic, and unless conducted under efficient in- 

 ternational measures of protection this must deluge the West continu- 

 ally with this most fatal of all bovine plagues. The improved culture 

 on the Steppes and the introduction of better forage plants enable the 

 stock owners to tide over the dry summer and the frozen w^inter more 

 satisfactorily, and thus contribute still more to the numbers and excel- 

 lence of the Eastern supply. Austria imported 20,000 Russian cattle 

 in 1861, 30,000 in 1868, and 55,000 in 1872. The more stringent restric- 

 tions have later lessened the numbers, but the increasing demands of 

 the West and supplies of the East must, ere long, turn the tide once 

 more, and bring large installments of these Eastern beeves. Hitherto 

 protection has been sought by the more or less perfect exclusion of 

 Steppe cattle, but the time must come when this shall be superseded 

 by an international arrangement founded on solid guarantees of the 

 soundness of the cattle exported. 



Already in regard to Rinderpest this has been attempted ; to-day all 

 the different countries of Germany act on the same law, that of 7th 

 April, 1869, in repelling and repressing this i^lague, and in April, 1872, 

 Austria called in Vienna a conference to consult as to the requisite in- 

 ternational guarantees, and delegates attended from Germany, England, 

 Austro- Hungary, Belgium, France, Italy, Roumania, Russia, Servia, 

 Switzerland, and Turkey. If each country would organize an efficient 

 service to stamp out Rinderpest as far as possible and to prevent its 

 radiatiug outward from any existing center of infection, every state 

 might by this perfect isolation of its limited infected area secure an 

 untrameled cattle traffic for its entire territory besides. 



The same can be done for contagious pleuropneumonia, and it is 

 easily demonstrated how much evil has already resultetl from the neg- 

 lect of other Governments to respond to the Swiss movement in this di- 

 rection in 1876. From this England loses yearly about 5,000 cattle 

 Belgium, 2,000 to3,000; Prussia, 2,000; Wurtemberg,500; Austria, 2,000 

 to 3,000, and France and Italy corresponding numbers. Rinderpest is 

 comparatively easily suppressed, because its prompt eruption and fatal 

 issue strikes the population with terror and it cannot be hidden ; but 

 the lung plague strikes slyly, hides its tracks, and, creeping into the 

 stables unseen, it diffuses its poison, infects, benumbs, and paralyzes 

 tlie lungs without the body appearing to suffer, and it only manifests 

 itself by outward symptoms when all is lost. More than this, the lung 

 plague often assumes the benign and almost latent form, so that after 

 months of incubation it still rests unrecognized and unsuspected, as- 

 suming a chronic type, but still scattering the poison, and the subject 

 even appearing to recover, without an abatement of its infecting 

 power. Often, too, the laws, and even very recent ones, take but half 



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