156 Epidemics. 



time to time given evidence of widespread mortality in their 

 ranks, as grouse, pheasants, pigeons, poultry, etc. 



And if these, in their turns, are visited by epidemic 

 disease, with how much more certainty can diseases in 

 horned cattle, horses, sheep, and swine, etc., be cited as 

 proving the fact of isolation, both in disease and species? 

 The foot and mouth disease, since 1839, has from time to 

 time attacked our horned cattle, but rarely the horse, if ever. 

 The pleuro-pneumonia, which has swept thousands of milch 

 cows from our sheds, has rarely touched the horse, save at 

 the Cape, where horned cattle appear, until lately, to have 

 been free from this form of disease. Influenza has visited the 

 horse and proved either destructive, or has temporarily laid 

 him aside for considerable periods of time ; whilst rinderpest 

 has kindly refused to ally itself to man or beast, save to 

 the bovine species, and has shown at once how defined in 

 its species and how diversified in the objects of selection 

 are the subjects of epidemic disease. 



Diseases of horses and cattle appear from time im- 

 memorial to have been closely allied to diseases in man, 

 when either have assumed an epidemic form, since one 

 has so frequently followed close upon the track of the other. 

 Rome, the great nursery of epidemics in the form of dire 

 pestilence, gave constant illustrations of this close connec- 

 tion between man and cattle. For brevity's sake, let one 

 sample suffice: " Annis 332, 296, and 291 B.C., Rome was 

 again and again visited by pestilence, which was particularly 

 fatal to breeding women and to breeding cattle. A similar 

 visitation affected Rome, Anno 272 B.C."* Here the identity 

 cf condition in contrast with the distinction of zoological 

 classification is so great, that we are almost led to the in- 

 ference, which in later ages has demonstrated itself that 



* Bascome on " Epidemic Pestilence," 1851, page 10, to which work 

 I am a great debtor. 



