264 



OFFICIAL PUBLICATIONS. 



Board of Agriculture — Annual Reports of Proceedings under tiic 

 Diseases of Animals Acts \ &c. [Cd. 1520.] Price lid. 



This volume contains a review of the proceedings of the 

 Animals Division of the Board in the form of reports by the 

 Chief Veterinary Officer and by the Assistant Secretary in 

 charge of that Division. It also contains a list of the Orders of 

 the Board in force on January 1st, 1903, and statistical tables 

 relating to the number of animals in Great Britain, the number 

 of animals imported from Ireland, the number of animals im- 

 ported from foreign countries, diseases amongst animals in 

 Great Britain, and the international trade in animals. 



Mr. Cope devotes a considerable part of his report to a review 

 of the investigations which have been made into the cause, 

 propagation, and means of transmission of the various con- 

 tagious and infectious diseases of animals. The subject 

 is, he points out, one of special interest, because all the 

 measures adopted for the suppression of contagious diseases of 

 animals are necessarily based upon a knowledge of the laws 

 which regulate the spread of those diseases. He then 

 proceeds to examine the question in relation to each of the 

 diseases dealt with under the Diseases of Animals Act of 1894, 

 namely, cattle plague, pleuro-pneumonia, foot-and-mouth dis- 

 ease, sheep scab, sheep pox, swine fever, anthrax, glanders, and 

 rabies. The remainder of the report is devoted to a review of 

 the diseases of home stock during the year 1902, with special 

 reference to the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease which 

 occurred in Kent in the spring of that year. A short account 

 of the experiments which have been made with regard to the 

 use of mallein as a diagnostic in glanders and the question of 

 whether or not it possesses curative properties [Cd. 1396] is also 

 given. The outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in the United 

 States of America is also discussed. 



