Plev.ro-Pneumonia and Dairy Cattle. 
Act which the Minister of Agriculture 
was about to put into force he was 
not prepared to say ; but he thought 
something in that direction must be 
done. The disease increased just at 
the time when the Minister of Agri- 
culture was going to take the matter 
up. He did not know whether Mr. 
Chaplin would be able to trace better 
than they could the source of the 
disease, but if he could not his task 
would be an exceedingly difficult one. 
Mr. Dest said the outbreaks 
almost invariably occurred in dairy 
cows. In their division they had 
been carrying out the Act in a most 
stringent manner, and they thought 
they had obtained some mastery over 
the disease ; but it still lurked and 
lingered about in the dairies, and 
was communicated by the cows from 
one dairy to another. It was almost 
always amongst the cows, and this 
led to the slaughter of valuable 
dairy herds and of young cattle 
brought into contact with them. 
The Earl of Ravexsworth 
referred to the great difficulty there 
was to get the Borough Councils, who 
were the governing bodies in the 
boroughs, to co-operate cordially in a 
matter of this kind. That in his 
experience was the great difficulty 
they had to contend with. Unless 
they got that perfect co-operation 
between town and county it was 
absolutely impossible to trace the 
disease. 
Sir Jacob Wilson* concurred 
with the remarks of the previous 
speakers, which, he said, showed how 
much justification there was for the 
Bill now before Parliament. It 
proved that the real curse had been 
the concealment of the disease. 
Whilst, as things stood at present, 
the Act might be well administered 
by the local authorities of any 
district, they had no power to act 
beyond their respective boundaries ; 
therefore they could not trace where 
the disease came from or where it 
went to. In future, with a central 
authority, they would be able to 
trace it throughout the whole country, 
irrespective of boundaries. Another 
thing, the Bill took powers of entry 
into dairies, which they did not before 
possess. They therefore hoped that 
this would give them further powers 
of discovery. The increase of the 
disease just now was undoubtedly due 
to the animals going out to grass and 
being scattered over the country. 
If it had been possible for the Bill 
to come into operation whilst the 
animals were in the sheds, they would 
have had a much better opportunity 
of grappling with the disease. He 
hoped that when the winter months 
come on the Government would 
tackle the subject with energy. Lord 
Ravensworth had referred to a point 
which was undoubtedly of great im- 
portance. He could point to the 
borough of Newcastle and to the 
county of Northumberland as an in- 
stance where the authorities worked 
in thorough harmony ; and the result 
was that when an outbreak occurred 
it never spread. The same thing 
applied in Perthshire and Perth. If 
the two authorities worked together 
it was possible to prevent the spread 
of the disease. 
Mr. Pell said he could add 
nothing to what had been stated by 
Lord Spencer excepting one reason 
why there was this very great danger 
connected with the dairy sheds. He 
believed that no London dairyman 
had ever applied for compensation. 
He could assure the Council that the 
instances — if indeed there were any — 
of urban dairymen discovering and 
disclosing the disease and applying 
the law for compensation were ex- 
tremely rare, and for this reason : 
there would be outcries directly on 
the part of their customers with re- 
gard to the sale and purchase of their 
milk. Therefore, when an urban 
dairyman found the disease upon his 
premises, his object was to kill the 
animal, sell it, get it out of the way, 
or call in a dealer to purchase the 
whole herd. The dealer required a 
certificate of the soundness of the 
animals; and there were veterinary 
surgeons in London who were a 
little obscure about the nature of the 
disease when called in. The assur- 
ance being given that the animals 
were healthy, the dairy was cleared 
out, and the cows went down into the 
country. The virtue attaching to 
those animals was the price paid by 
people who knew what a shed animal 
was by the appearance of the skin. 
The matter was hedged by the know- 
