( 216 ) [April, 



CHRONICLES OF SCIENCE. 



1. AGRICULTURE. 



At length, after twenty months of a disastrous experience, we can 

 report a week of entire freedom from the Cattle Plague. During 

 the week ending March 2nd, no case was reported at Whitehall ; 

 and it only needs three weeks' continuance of this good fortune, and 

 (excepting our liability to the reimportation of the poison) we may 

 hope that we shall have finally got rid of the disease. That the 

 infection is as virulent as ever when it occurs, appeal's, however, in 

 the recent experience at Islington, where Mrs. Xicholl's herd was a 

 second time attacked. The plague first appeared here in June, 

 1866, ran through the sheds, and spread throughout the country ; 

 it reappeared in February of this year, again ran through the herd, 

 but was confined within the premises by the precautions which, 

 not possible twenty months ago, are now enforced by law. 



The President of the Royal Agricultural Society did well, in his 

 Annual Address in December last, to insist upon the need of consi- 

 dering the disease as a conflagration ; urging upon the Government 

 that, just as the whole machinery of fire-engines and firemen is 

 maintained where there is no fire, to extinguish it should it arise, 

 so the existing machinery for stamping out the Cattle Plague 

 should be maintained in readiness to deal with it, should it again 

 attack us. The other points to which Mr. Thompson's address 

 referred are also of first-rate agricultural importance, including the 

 difficulties of the labour question, the need of developing those 

 departments of farm ptractice which result in the production of 

 animal food, and the call for an improved agricultural education. 

 On the first of these topics he declared the impossibility of carrying 

 out the so-called co-operative system in farm practice; recom- 

 mending, however, as a much more likely expedient for retaining 

 the existing agricultural labourers, that farmers generally should 

 adopt what is already a common practice in some counties — the 

 plan of either letting land to their labourers, or otherwise pro- 

 viding them with a cow's keep. A man who can ensure regular 

 work at fair wages, with sufficient land to keep a cow and a pig, 

 and obtain even a moderately good cottage among the friends and 

 neighbours whom he has known from childhood, will seldom be 

 found willing to change his position for the crowded courts and 

 alleys of the large towns, even by the temptation of considerably 



