72 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



disease here, and that the eyes of farmers will be open to the 

 immense importance of trying to prevent it. 



Mr. Capen, of Dorchester, inquired more particularly as to 

 the history of the disease, and the manner in which the cattle 

 plague was introduced into England. 



Mr. Flint. — This disease comes from the steppes of Russia, 

 and from the shelterless plains of Southern Siberia, stretching 

 away for hundreds of miles, under the blaze of a burning sun, 

 baking and panting in the heat. Like a monstrous spectre it stalks 

 forth to breathe its fatal blast upon the horned cattle of the 

 West. On those boundless wastes the grass withers under the 

 fierce sky, the water-courses dry up, the ground becomes parched 

 and gaping with thirst, and the grasses that are left are coarse, 

 innutritions and tasteless. The cattle perish in vast numbers, 

 or, if they have vitality enough to withstand the horrors of the 

 drought, they may linger through the winter, nursing the germs 

 of disease to communicate them to still hardier ones that have 

 survived the drought and the famine. 



Let us glance for a moment at its periodical visitations. We 

 shall find that it has almost invariably spread from the banks of 

 the Don and the Volga towards the Danube, and extended over 

 the countries of the West. As early as 817 the cattle of Hun- 

 gary were swept off in vast numbers, and it crossed the Drave 

 and travelled as far as the Atlantic coast. In 1223 Europe was 

 again devastated by a disease supposed to be this same contagious 

 typhus, generated at the foot of the Carpathians, and sweeping 

 the vast herds of Hungary almost from the face of the earth. 



Still more recently, in 1625, the plague broke away from its 

 bounds, invaded Northern Italy, swept up along the banks of the 

 Po, was introduced by the cattle dealers into the refined city of 

 Padua, and so over the whole of the Venetian territory. But 

 in 1709 the losses were still more immense. Like the march of 

 death, it went from Tartary through Muscovy, passed the 

 confines of Bessarabia, Croatia and Dalmatia, and so into 

 Northern Italy and France. It went from Hungary to Southern 

 Germany and Switzerland, and from Poland north and south 

 into Silesia. Through the States of the Pope it went to the 

 Neapolitan domains, where the mortality, in a few weeks, proved 

 to be double that of the north, 70,000 head of cattle being 

 destroyed. The plague then invaded the Netherlands, where it 



