History of Animal Plagues. 359 



In the month of October^ 1745? ^^^ Steppe murrain penetrated 

 the Tyrol ; from Carinthia it once more travelled to Venice, and 

 only ceased in that State in 1749. In Northern Germany, 

 Prussia appears to have suffered most severely; but it did not 

 appear in Saxony, it seems, until 1746.^ In Prussian Lithuania, 

 according to Gallesky, more than 145,000 cattle were swept 

 away in 1750. It passed through Germany to Holland in 

 1744, and in two years destroyed in that country upwards of 

 200,000 head of cattle. The faculty of medicine at Leyden was 

 at this time consulted as to the means whereby the Plague misrht 

 be abated, and its report was published in Dutch by Lucht- 

 mans. In 1745, Professors de Haen, Ouwens, and Van Velse, 

 and Dr Weiterhof, wrote a dissertation on the subject, which 

 was published at the Hague, and M. Engleman contributed an 

 essay to the Seventh Volume of the 'Acts of the Society of 

 Haarlem/ From 1745 to 1749 it killed 280,000 animals in 

 Denmark. '^ The 14th of January, 1746, was appointed a day 

 of public fasting and prayer to be observed all over Denmark on 

 account of the mortality among the cattle through that king- 

 dom. It is reckoned to have carried off" no less than 60,000 

 before the middle of December. It advanced likewise in Jutland, 

 and the apprehensions of it engaged most people to kill their cat- 

 tle.'^ It entered Sweden, and, according to Linnaeus, in the 

 province of Schonen alone 32,584 oxen and cows died, leaving 

 alive only two per cent, of the entire horned stock of the pro- 

 vince.'' In the little island of Oesel, in 1750-51, no fewer than 

 20,000 cattle succumbed. From Holland the disease penetrated 

 Austria and French Flanders, reaching Laon, and in Artois and 

 Picardy destroyed 11,000 animals.* 



Between 1740 and 1748, it was estimated that Western 

 central Europe had lost no less than three millions of cattle. 



The Continental authorities who have observed and described 

 the disease at this time, as will be seen by a reference to the 

 foregoing essay, are very numerous, and nnich dilliculty is ex- 



' Rnnipelt. Beitrage zur Geschichte der Vieseucheii. Dresden, 1776. Vol. 

 i. p. J 1 7. 



- Scot's Magazine, vol. xvii. ji. 605. 



^ LinitiEus. Schonenschc Reise. * jf. Gamgee. Op. cit. 



