2 The Faniier''s Veterinary Adviser. 



by general wars and the accumulation of cattle drawn 

 from all sources, (infected and sound), into the commis- 

 sariat parks. In the first half of the eighteenth century, 

 it is estimated that 200,000,000 head of cattle perished in 

 Europe in connection with the Austrian wars. These 

 plagues again entered Italy in 1793 with the Austrian 

 troops and in three years carried off 3,000,000 to 4,000,000 

 cattle ia that peninsula. More recently rapid railroad 

 and steamboat traffic and extended commerce have taken 

 the place of war in favoring their diffusion. Free trade 

 between England and the Continent since 1842 has cost 

 the former $450,000,000 iu thirty years, and as much as 

 $40,000,000 in 1865-6 during the prevalence of the Einder- 

 pest. A similar importation cost Egypt 300,000 head of 

 cattle (nearly the whole stock of the country), in 1842, 

 and others have caused ruiaous but unestimated losses in 

 Austraha, Cape of Good Hope, and South America. On 

 the other hand, some of the raost exposed countries of 

 Europe, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Schleswig-Holstein, 

 Oldenburg, Mecklenburg, and Switzerland have long kept 

 clear of these plagues by the simple expedient of excluding 

 aU infected animals or their products, and promptly 

 stamping out the disease by the slaughter of the sick, fol- 

 lowed by thorough disinfection, when they have been acci- 

 dentally introduced. Exclusively breeding districts, in 

 Spain, Portugal, Normandy, and the Scottish Highlands, 

 into which no strange cattle are ever imported, also keep 

 clear of nearly all of these destructive pestilences. 



It is imquestionable that the animal plagues are propa- 

 gated, in Western Europe and America, only by the dis- 

 ease germs produced in countless myriads in the body of 

 a diseased animal and conveyed from that to the healthy. 

 It follows that the destruction of the infected subjects 

 and the thorough disinfection of the carcass, manure, 

 buildings, etc., is the most economical treatment of aU the 

 more fatal forms of contagious disease in live stock. For 

 the loss fatal forms, the most perfect separation and seclu- 



