44^ History of Anwial Plagues. 



an epizooty broke out which was at one time supposed to be the 

 Cattle Plague, at another gangrenous sore-throat ; and Heusin- 

 ger thinks it might have been a new outbreak of the anthrax 

 disease, which may have lingered from 1770 to this year. ^ A 

 very afflicting case of destruction amongst cattle has occurred to 

 augment those which have arisen since 1772; it is an epizooty 

 that, if we may so speak, has attacked all animals in succession, 

 and has inflicted the most dreadful destruction on our colonies ; 

 these ravages are all the more cruel, because they have given rise, 

 in some instances, to those suspicions which oppose the adoption 

 of proper remedies for a disease that has already desolated entire 

 countries in Europe.' ^ 



Franque^ shows that in the Duchy of Nassau, from this 

 year until 1830, bovine epizootic pleuro-pneumonia was scarcely 

 ever absent. 



A.D, 1773. This year was remarkable for the great numbers 

 of mice observable evervwhere.^ The Cattle Plague still afflicted 

 Holland, and scarcely had Flanders and Picardy begun to repair 

 their losses in cattle, than the embers of this scourge, which had not 

 in all probability been thoroughlyextinguished in the twopreceding 

 years, or were, perhaps, stirred up by some fresh importation from 

 Holland, blazed out anew, and with all its dreaded fury, in this 

 vear. It desolated a large portion of Flanders, especially all the 

 district of Lille, and quickly the generalities of Soissons and 

 Amiens were involved in the same unhappy fate; above all, 

 however, the districts lying along the banks of the river Oise 

 suffered most severely. The malady did not differ much, in its 

 essential features, from the varieties and phenomena it presented 



in 1745- 



In this year, the immortal Haller published his investigations 

 into the nature of an epizooty which had several tiines been 

 observed in Switzerland. The great physician thought it was 

 the Cattle Plague, but no one can read his description of 

 this Swiss maladv without surmisino; that it is a different disease 



1 Moreaji de Saint Mery. Chabc7-t. Instructions, &c., vol. iii. p. 261. 



^ Fraiique. Geschichte der Hausthierseuchen im Herzogth. Nassau. Frankfort, 



1834. 



^ Walter. Forstphysiographie, jd. 159. 



