History of Animal Plagues. 347 



more general a due knowledge of this disease, to have a copy of the ac- 

 count of the signs of it, being printed on an open sheet of paper, hung 

 up in a proper frame in the market-house, town-house, or any other 

 pubhc building in each parish, where the people may constantly have 

 recourse to it, without troubling the minister, which would induce 

 them to take more readily the pains to obtain the requisite information 

 from it. Another copy should be always in the possession of every 

 magistrate, inspector, or other person who has any otficial concern in 

 tlie execution of the Orders of Council, that they may have the neces- 

 sary means at hand of enabling them to judge how far, in any suspici- 

 ous case, there is just ground to conclude the actual presence of the 

 disease. 



'As the greater or less success of the injunctions or regulations or- 

 dained by the Government for the preventing the bringing into our 

 country the contagion of the murrain, or for suppressing it if brought, 

 depends on their being more or less generally known, it seems that the 

 present means of publication of them are defective, as it is certain that 

 by such means only a small part of those, whose conformity to them is 

 requisite to the end, can be possibly thence apprized of them. A pro- 

 clamation of all Orders of Council respecting the disease is inserted in 

 the Gazette ; and the last Act of Parliament directs them, as above- 

 mentioned, to be read one Sunday of every month in the parish church, 

 or other place of public devotion. But few of the common people, and 

 perhaps even the magistrates, &c., constantly read the Gazette in the 

 country ; and there are many parishes into which it never comes at all. 

 Numbers of persons, being of other sects of religion, do not go to the 

 parish church at any time ; and others are very liable to be absent on 

 the particular days when these Orders are read. The churchwardens or 

 other officers, moreover, who are to provide the copies of them, not 

 having an opportunity of seeing the proclamations in the Gazette, are 

 sometimes entirely uninformed of them, and therefore do not provide 

 the printed copies of them as directed. For these and other reasons 

 the reading them duly in the church is often neglected, and conse- 

 quently the whole or a great number in every parish are left ignorant 

 of what is ordained. It is necessary hence that some more etfectual 

 method of publishing the contents of the proclamations should be pur- 

 sued ; and it would be, therefore, right that the contents of them 

 should be printed in the manner before proposed for the account of the 

 signs of the disease, and hung up with it in the most public place in 

 every parish, which could not fail to make them much more generally 

 and perfectly known than they can be at present. This should be, 

 under the circumstances now sul)sisting, particularly attended to with 



