History of Animal Plagues. 417 



their character in diH'erciit countries, but nearly everywhere the 

 summer was moist and sultry; the harvests were bad, the cereals 

 being; damaoed. It is noted that the olives suffered from the un- 

 favourable weather at Montpcllicr. Ht is even thought that the 

 olives have been much injured by a fog which the country people 

 call "neble/^ and that they have been all gnawed and perforated 

 by a worm ; this insect has grown insensibly, and it becomes very 

 much developed in all those trees which have been preserved a 

 very long time ; the oil extracted from them is pungent and 

 very bad/^ The human species suffered much from epidemics 

 of a serious character. Srhnurrer reports that glossanthrax ap- 

 peared in the summer of this year in the western parts of 

 Switzerland, and spread to the eastward, always following, how- 

 ever, the course of the Alps. 



The maladies amono;st animals were fjenerallv numerous and 

 fatal. Rutty and other English writers thus summarize them : — 



'Last year we had an account from Denmark, of an epidemic 

 catarrh among horses, and that the dogs were infected by lying 

 in the stables among them ; and from Madrid, May the 5th, that 

 900 dogs died in one day; and from Genoa, of a mortality among 

 the poultry; and May 19th from Calais a like account, and that 

 the disease was fatal chiefly to hens.^ ^ 



'An epidemic among the horses in France characterized by 

 a defluxion from the nose.'^ 



' Manv epizootics raged in Europe among horses, swine, 

 horned cattle, sheep, dogs, game, and poultry.^* 



In the marshy region of Brouageais, Rochelle, in France, ma- 

 lignant anthrax attacked cattle and sheep, and numbers of horses, 

 pigs, dogs, and fowls perished at the same time. This malady 

 also existed in other provincesof France, and from the descriptions 

 given of the disease as it was observed m horses and cattle, it 

 would appear to have been glossanthrax. ' There arose suddenly 

 towards the beginnino; of the month of June, a disease amonost 

 horses and cows, which attacked nearly all the animals of the 

 various villages in three or four days; it came from high Gatinois 

 and commenced in this localitv soon after the fair of St Peter. 



' Foiirnicr. Richard dc IJautcsicrck. Recueil d'Observalions, vol. i. p. 39. 

 ^ Rutty. Op. cit. * FrccinaiC s ]o\\xx\7i\. ' Webster. Oj). cit., p. 412. 



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