Report on the Trade in Animals. 
209 
taining the paragraph, Tuesday se'nnight would be October 
22nd, or 18 days after the cattle-fair at Ballinasloe. 
In a subsequent number (16th November) a correspondent 
states that, in his neighbourhood, " all went well till Banagher 
fair. That fair, and Ballinasloe also, was full of diseased ani- 
mals, and now the whole place is full of it, from stock purchased, 
or brought home unsold." 
The bearing of such facts on the general question of the greater 
prevalence of foot-and-mouth disease during certain months of 
the vear has been discussed in a previous portion of this Report 
(pp."' 190 and 201). 
Inland Transit. — Ballinasloe fair may also be taken as a good 
starting point for an illustration of the conditions incidental to 
the cattle-traffic between England and Ireland, because with 
regard to it the subject can be taken up at the point where it 
was left by the Government Commissioner in charge of the 
inspection, and the advantage is thus gained of commencing 
from an official basis. The Commissioner reports as follows : — 
" On Thursday, the 3rd October, I found great numbers of cattle in and 
about the fair showing symptoms of exhaustion and foot-soreness, owing to 
the extreme beat of the day, and to having been overdriven ; but in no 
instance could I discover vesicles between the claws or in the mouths of any 
such footsore or lame animals. Those that slobbered at the mouth did so in 
the usual manner of cattle suffering from exhaustion ; but in such cases there 
was an entire absence of the peculiar slopping or sucking noise characteristic 
of genuine foot-and-mouth distemper." 
The cattle-fair was, as already stated, held on Friday, the 4th 
October. 
How the cattle that arrived the day before fared for food and 
water, I cannot say. The probability is that they got neither, as 
the fair-green was too poached to afford any herbage, and there 
was no provision, so far as I could ascertain, for watering cattle 
on it. It is not likely that the drovers, having once got their 
beasts on the green, would drive them off again in search of food 
or water ; and it is certain that the arrivals during the ensuing 
night and following morning must have been compelled to make 
their last meal sufficient for their wants until they arrived at 
their new destination. Supposing their destination to be Eng- 
land, the course of events must have been very nearly what I am 
now about to describe. 
Most of the cattle which exchanged hands had been bought 
by noon on the 4th October, and the energies of the purchasers 
on English account were by that time directed to obtaining an 
appropriation of trucks for the conveyance of their stock to North 
Wall. Their drovers were busy driving the cattle to one of the 
numerous strips of land adjacent to the railway, which had been 
hired by the Company for the temporary reception of stock 
