1870. J ( 87 ) 



CHRONICLES OF SCIENCE, 



litcIuVtiKf % |)rotc^m0S of ^mixti ^otutm at JSome m& ^broair ; 

 aitir ftotkcs d ^xttxd j5n*ntifo f iterate. 



1. AGBICULTUKE. 



The past three months have bristled all over with topics of agri- 

 cultural interest — many of them, unfortunately, involving dis- 

 agreeable experience. It is certain, now that a large portion of 

 the wheat crop has been threshed, that the harvest of 1869 has 

 been very much below the average productiveness of past years : 

 and the low prices which wheat commands, owing probably to 

 no one wanting corn in the general market of the world except 

 ourselves, whatever their benefit to the nation at large, have mate- 

 rially aggravated to English farmers the injury of a deficient yield. 

 — The foot and mouth disease — a cattle plague of more or less viru- 

 lence and frequency ever since 1839, when it first appeared — has 

 been unusually general and severe during the past autumn. It is 

 now, however, believed to be on the decline. Though rarely fatal, 

 it is a painful malady, stopping the milk of cows and wasting the 

 flesh of fatting cattle, and thus destroying the property of stock 

 owners. It is generally supposed to be an importation from the 

 Continent ; but though that probably was true thirty years ago, it 

 can now hardly be doubted that the disease has become indigenous. 

 Careful quarantine, both at the ports of debarkation, and in home 

 localities wherever it exists, has, however, all along been urgently 

 demanded, and it has been at length conceded, so that we may hope to 

 see the evil reduced within less serious limits. — The miseries of cattle 

 transit, whether by land or by sea, have been urged on public attention, 

 especially by the interest which Miss Burdett Coutts has taken in 

 the subject. The use of a railway cattle-truck, in which live stock 

 shall have access to both food and water on a long journey, is most 

 desirable ; and it is believed that the inferior condition in which 

 cattle after a railway journey reach the metropolitan market from 

 great distances, when they have had no refreshment on the road, 

 must at length make consigners of such cattle willing to pay 

 the expenses involved in the provision of better accommodation. 

 An experiment directed by Miss Coutts, in which six cattle were 

 sent from Edinburgh to London, shows that cattle will eat and 

 drink upon the way with great comfort to themselves and great 

 advantage to their owners, if they have the opportunity. — The con- 

 dition of Ireland, which is to a great extent an agricultural question, 

 has of late occupied the public mind more painfully than any other 



