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Report on the Trade in Animals. 
maintenance, and the other precisely the reverse. In the first 
class 1 would place the receiving-yard belonging to the London 
and North-Western Railway Company, and 1 regret that no other 
yard in Dublin that has come under my notice is worth classi- 
fying with it. This yard is commodiously divided into pens for 
horned and other stock, the latter being covered with substantial 
roofs. All the divisions are kept thoroughly cleansed and white- 
washed, and each pen is furnished with a drinking trough. This 
is precisely what a receiving-yard for live stock should be ; and 
it seems only fair to assume that what an English railway com- 
pany can afford to do in Ireland, is not beyond the means of 
Irish steamboat companies doing a large carrying-trade to the 
principal ports on the western coast of Great Britain. 
The next yard to that just described is a large square open piece 
of ground with two water troughs near one corner. In the absence 
of any permanent pens for the reception of cattle or sheep, the inte- 
rior of this yard would have a desolate appearance, but for the fact 
that it is, to a certain extent, diversified, though not decorated, by 
an accumulation of empty boxes, barrels, and crates, which are 
turned to useful account by the drovers as mobile temporary 
divisions between their several herds. As there is no inspection 
of animals while they rest in the receiving-yard, or at any other 
time previous to their shipment from Ireland, except, perhaps, 
in the Dublin market, it may easily be understood that a yard 
managed in this manner must become a nest of disease. The 
passage from Dublin to Liverpool is generally about twelve or 
fourteen hours in duration. Supposing that a beast imbibed the 
germs of foot-and-mouth disease in the receiving-yard in 
Dublin, it would, in the absence of inspection at Liverpool, pass 
inland without detection, and in all probability would affect a 
hundred or more other cattle either in the steamboat, on the 
railway, or in the market, before the existence of the disease 
in the infecting animal was disco-vered, either by the consignee 
or by the veterinary inspector of the local authority on the 
market. 
There is no inspection of animals previous to shipment, either 
at Dublin or any other Irish port ; but a policeman would pro- 
bably stop any that were evidently in an advanced stage of disease. 
The London and North-Western Railway Company have also 
adopted a system of scouts, as a rough kind of substitute for 
inspection. The men thus employed have an empirical know- 
ledge of the appearance of an animal affected with foot-and- 
mouth disease ; and if they suspect any that are about to enter 
the Company's receiving-yard, they signal to the gate-keeper, the 
gates are closed, and the suspected animal is turned into a 
separate yard until examined by a veterinary surgeon. Connected 
