238 Note on the Outbreak of Foot-and-Mouth Disease. 
food, excepting pollards and a little hay, for two or three days, 
it soon recovered, so that the attack was evidently slight. On 
the 26th, No. 24, which drank from the same trough, was 
observed to have that peculiar smacking of the mouth which is 
a sure sign of this disease ; but that suffered less from it than 
did the first. On the 28th, No. 25 had a yet slighter attack ; 
and no more were taken ill until the beginning of October, 
when No. 21 had a similar attack to the first ; whilst about 
the same time a young bull in one of the pens (c) was affected. 
The disease has spread no further on those premises. The 
same person attended to all the cattle, who took the precaution 
of both feeding and littering the healthy ones first. The result 
of the attack appears to me to have a value, as tending to, show 
that the poison-germs of foot-and-mouth disease float in the air, 
and communicate disease, as does also the actual contact with 
saliva, &c. Else how was it that the ox in No. 23 took it from 
the cow? Again, after Nos. 23, 24, 25, had had it, it passed 
over Nos. 21 and 22, and attacked No. 20. Certainly the man 
may have conveyed it to them, as I suspect he did to the young 
bull. 
This experiment also tends to confirm the opinion that 
carbolic acid is most valuable as a preventive, and that it also 
exercises a beneficial influence on animals attacked. I think, 
tod, it points to the necessity of shutting affected cattle into 
yards upon the first appearance of the attack in them ; in fact, 
isolate the disease by confining them to a fever hospital. If 
they are left in a field, every living creature passing through it 
may carry the disease on to other fields, till, like a fire, gathering 
strength as it goes, a whole district is attacked, and no precau- 
tions can avail to stop it. So has it been with us this year on 
all our grazing and dairy land ; and the loss has been very 
great. At a place called Inglesham, I rode, at the time, through 
a dairy of 30 milking-cows ; and whilst some were in a deplor- 
able state, all looked more or less wretched ; and I am quite 
sure that 3/. a-head is a moderate estimate of the loss sustained. 
This was not a solitary instance, but a sample of the whole neigh- 
bourhood ; whilst only last week a cattle-dealer of repute told 
me that a great many graziers would not be able to bring out 
their cattle at Christmas as they had intended, on accoVint of 
the loss of condition, through foot-and-mouth disease. 
December ith, 1875. 
