2 History of Animal Plagues. 



conficruration have contributed much to render it insaUibrious, 

 The lower country is annually exposed to far-spreading inunda- 

 tions by the flooding of the Nile; and the retiring sea leaves 

 behind it a reeking morass^ which, owing to the nature of the 

 deposit left behind, together with the large amount of moisture, 

 and the hot sun shedding its rays direct upon it, shortly after 

 becomes a beautifully green plain, covered with the rankest and 

 most luxuriant vegetation, aiid pools of stagnant corrupted water. 

 Then quickly succeeds a period when it is an arid desert, deeply 

 laid with dust and hot sand, and endowed with nothing that 

 could tend to the welfare of animal life. 



The indefatigable professor of the school at Abou Zabel, M. 

 Hamont, says of Egypt, relative to epizootic maladies: 'The 

 breed of cattle in Egypt is generally weak in constitution, and 

 neglected. Epizootic diseases frequently effect the most dread- 

 ful ravages among them ; sometimes they devastate the coun- 

 try to such a degree that men are harnessed to the plough 

 and the cart, in order that the land may be, although im- 

 perfectly, cultivated, and some assistance obtained.' Horses 

 sufl^er much from farcy, and the same authority adds: 'Soften- 

 ing of the liver in Egypt is a primitive and essential malady, very 

 widespread in the army and in the country, more common in 

 summer than in winter, and attacking by preference the fattest 

 horses, and those of an adult age. It is a very redoubtable dis- 

 ease, and kills many horses.' 



Intestinal hemorrhages are also very frequent and most fatal 

 to horses. These animals — cattle, sheep, and camels, also — suffer 

 from a deadly dysentery. Hamont continues : ^ Dysentery is 

 very conmion in summer among troop and other horses, attack- 

 ing those which live in the open air, as well as those which in- 

 habit low, badly ventilated stables. In regiments there some- 

 times breaks out, during the months of July and August, an 

 acute form of dysentery which kills the horses in a few hours. 

 The mud, earth, and sand which the water of the Nile contains, 

 and which these animals drink, is the cause of this dysentery; 

 these matters are found in the intestines. The great crowding 

 of animals, the intense heat, too dry and unvaried food, are also 

 determining causes. . . . The dysentery of cattle is especially 



