62 The Lung Plague of Cattle. 



eased cattle were slaughtered, but aU proved of no avail 

 Not only were the free, roaming herds infected, but so 

 many places were contaminated that it was soon per- 

 ceived that help from this source was not to be expected. 

 Destroy a whole infected herd, and you still left the in- 

 Ifection in the station from which, in its unfenced state, 

 other herds could not be excluded, and where they were 

 certain to take in the germs of the malady. After enor- 

 mous losses had been sustained by the combined opera- 

 tions of the pest and the pole-ax, it was concluded that 

 the remedy was worse than the disease, and the colonists 

 reluctantly fell back on the expedient of inoculation. 

 This is based on the fact that the disease is rarely con- 

 tracted a second time by the same animal, and it can be 

 practiced on all calves with losses at the rate of from two 

 to five per cent, only, so that the mortality is insignificant 

 as compared with the thirty to fifty per cent, which per- 

 ish where the affection is contracted in the ordinary way. 

 The great objection to inoculation is, that it can only be 

 practiced at the expence of a universal diffusion of the 

 poison, and of its maintenance in a state of constant ac- 

 tivity and growth. "With such a universal diffusion of the 

 virus, the stock owners are virtually debarred from in- 

 troducing any new stock for improving the native breeds, 

 or infusing new vigor or stamina, inasmuch as such new 

 arrivals would almost certainly fall early victims to the- 

 plague. Australia, therefore, now suffers from the per- 

 manent incubus of the lung plague, and can only import 

 high-class cattle at great risk. 



" This is an occurrence of yesterday, but it is only a 

 repetition of the immemorial experience of the steppes of 

 Russia. There we find the same conditions of great herds 

 roaming free over immense uninclosed tracts, and all the 

 facilities for an easy and wide diffusion of animal poi 

 sons. There, accordingly, we find the home, in all ages, 

 of the animal plagues of the Old "World. To these end- 

 less steppes Europe and European colonies owe their 

 fi-equent invasions of lung fever, rinderpest, aphthotis fever, 

 and sJieep-pox. To these are to be charged the losses, to 

 be estimated only by many thousands of millions, which 

 have repeatedly fallen on the other civilized countries oi 

 the world. From thes-n steppes the disease has spread over 



