( 76 ) [Jan. 



CHRONICLES OF SCIENCE. 



1. AGBICULTUBE. 



The Cattle Plague has at length dwindled to altogether insignifi- 

 cant proportions. The number of cases reported weekly is rarely 

 more than 10 ; and an occasional aggravation of the disease, or its 

 reappearance now and then in old localities, raising the weekly total 

 to 20 or 30, while it no doubt shows what a malignant disorder 

 we still retain among us, may, we hope, be taken to be merely the 

 occasional flare of an expiring flame. How much we owe to the 

 policy of extermination, rather than attempted cure, may be seen 

 by the results of the opposite system, as witnessed both in Holland 

 and among ourselves. In the annual address, recently given by 

 the President of the Eoyal Agricultural Society, it was pointed out 

 that the number of cases reported in two weeks — the one in Sep- 

 tember, 1865, and the other in September, 1866, was exactly the 

 same. Unrestricted cattle traffic during the two months following 

 the former period, had swelled the tale of cases up to thousands. 

 Destruction of affected stock and absolute isolation of infected 

 places during the two months following the corresponding week of 

 1866, had reduced the disease almost to extinction. In Holland 

 again, during the past summer, when here the disease was yielding to 

 restrictive measures, it grew to lamentable proportions — rising from 

 two or three hundred cases weekly during June, to nearly eight times 

 as many in September. There is certainly sufficient guidance for us 

 here as to the policy to be followed if the disease should reappear 

 among us in anything like its original severity. Up to the present 

 time about 5J per cent, of the whole cattle stock of Great Britain 

 have been attacked, while of the whole stock upon infected farms, 

 nearly 60 per cent, took the disease. Of the total number of attacks 

 whose results were known, 35 per cent, were killed ; 51^- per cent, 

 died ; and 13| per cent, recovered. 



The utilization of Town Sewage was the subject of a conference 

 at Leamington during October, which was attended by a number 

 of gentlemen interested in the solution of the difficulties surrounding 

 the subject. These difficulties are almost entirely the result of an 

 extension of the water-closet system, by which the waste of houses, 

 no longer received into cesspools and carted away to market-gardens, 

 is washed into culverts, and thence pollutes our rivers. The remedy 

 offered by one party to this discussion is the irrigation of grass 



