1867.] ( 367 ) 



CHRONICLES OF SCIENCE. 



1. AGEICULTUEE. 



The Cattle Plague is still one of the leading agricultural topics. 

 Its reappearance in the London cowhouses within the past few 

 weeks, after so long an interval, has startled us all ; and Agricul- 

 tural Societies, believing that it is the result of an imported poison, 

 are urging upon Government the need of altogether forbidding 

 the landing of live cattle from the continent, or at least of killing 

 all fat stock at the port of debarkation, allowing milch cattle and 

 other stock in " store " condition to leave only after a sufficiently long 

 quarantine. During the last weeks of May the disease, which had 

 since January altogether left the metropolis, reappeared in many 

 cowhouses in the east and north of London ; and in several cases 

 large herds have been swept away ; the virulence of the attack being 

 just as great as ever. No fewer than sixty cows in one herd of 

 ninety-five were taken in three days from the first detection of a 

 symptom, and the whole were then slaughtered ; and the same fate 

 has overtaken several other stocks. The whole of the cattle grazing 

 on Wormwood Scrubs, for example, have been thus disposed of: 

 and it is to be hoped that the severity of the measures which have 

 been adopted may hinder the further extension of the malady. No 

 attempt at cure has hitherto succeeded. Mr. H. Dixon, who has as 

 large and particular acquaintance with English herds as any man, 

 relates in the current number of the English Agricultural Society's 

 journal the few examples known to him of any attempt to deal 

 with the disease. His evidence amounts to little more than that 

 isolation has saved many a herd that was in danger, and that 

 remedies have done hardly anything whatever. Thus, Mr. Da vies, 

 of Cheshire, had saved his herd for some months by using chlorine gas 

 constantly in the houses, and hyposulphite of soda in the water 

 given to the cattle ; sawdust, too, was used as litter, being more 

 cleanly than straw ; but whether the safety of the stock was due to 

 mere isolation or to this disinfection of their houses and this medi- 

 cation of their food cannot be certainly declared. It was not, however, 

 until they had been turned out to the pasture field that they were 

 attacked, and then many of them died. An iodine ointment rubbed 

 on the chest and acting as a counter-irritant, served in two or three 

 cases to give relief when applied early enough ; but in only nine cases 

 out of thirty-six did the patient recover. Mr. Aylmer, of Norfolk, 



