History of Animal PlagiLcs. 295 



would not a little contribute to the accomplishment of this dif- 

 ficult purpose to lower the hedges and cut up all the superfluous 

 wood in enclosures of a dry soil, by which means not only a 

 freer communication of air would be obtained, but likewise a 

 greater degree of dryness and purity; and in marshy and fenny 

 inclosures, where infected cattle are known to have been, it seems 

 no less useful to burn wood for ^some time after they have left ' 

 them.) As to the method which was at first employed to stop 

 the progress of the infection in any place where it had once 

 broke out, viz. the indiscriminate shooting of the sick cattle, 

 though it was at first wisely enjoined by the legislature, yet I am 

 of opinion, that unless it be always executed upon the very first 

 suspicion of the distemper's appearance, it never was, nor ever 

 could be, effectual. And if nothing can justify the killing a few 

 but the probability arising from thence of saving the rest, what 

 is killing them without such probability but conspiring with the 

 distemper against the lives of the whole? But there can be no 

 such probability withouta punctual observance of the circumstance 

 above-mentioned, viz. a very early execution of the Government's 

 Order; and what chance there is for such a compliance in a 

 country where we are apt to prize oiir liberty most when it is 

 least useful to us, our fatal experience has already too well in- 

 formed us. Nor in the present extensiveness of the contagion 

 can even the most early execution of this Order be always success- 

 ful ; for though it be probable from some experiments lately 

 made that the cattle do not infect each other till a few days after 

 the very first signs of the distemper in themselves, yet it is no 

 less probable from other experiments, as well as the reason of 

 things, that the pastures in which they feed, nay, the very high- 

 ways through which they pass, do receive and retain some por- 

 tions of contagion accidentally brought into them by animals 

 of different species ; so that though they escape it ever so often 

 from each other, by the care of their owners, yet they are 

 every hour liable to it from many other accidents. When the 

 means, therefore, of communicating the distemper are become 

 thus numerous, and the chance for preventing its spreading from 

 that as well as other causes is proportionately lessened, surely it 

 is advisable to aj)ply our industry to find out the means of cure. 



