450 
Annual Report of the Governors 
animals inhabit. They also show that food, breed, system of 
management, and all the ordinary causes on which the disease 
has by some persons been thought to depend, are altogether 
inoperative in its pi-oduction. The year 1870 has witnessed one 
of the most remarkable outbreaks of the mouth-and-foot disease 
on record, and at the time we write the disease, although much 
diminished in many parts of Great Britain and Ireland, is far 
from being exterminated by the sanitary regulations of ' The Con- 
tagious Diseases (Animals) Act, 1869.' 
Pleuro-pneumonia has also been rife, but less so than in some 
preceding years. Many parts of the country have sustained 
serious losses, particularly those where large numbers of dairy 
cows are kept. Animals of this kind are highly susceptible to 
the disease, and for this reason, among others, large towns suffer 
to a greater extent than extensive tracts of country where but few 
milking animals are found, although extensive herds exist. 
The regulations of ' The Contagious Diseases (Animals") Act' 
are operating very beneficially in keeping in check the spread of 
pleuro-pneumonia. 
It remains only to make mention of two or three diseases 
which have been brought prominently to the notice of the Pro- 
fessors during the year. 
(a.) Venous Congestion in Lamhinr) Eices. — The long-continued 
stormy and wet weather which prevailed in the spring, and the 
sudden transitions from cold to heat which occurred, led to very 
serious losses, in the western parts of England in particular, of 
in-lamb ewes. Many of the animals died after a few hours 
illness, either just before or very shortly after parturition. Many 
lambs were also born dead. Post-mortem examinations revealed 
the existence of venous congestion chiefly of the uterus or of the 
brain, less frequently of the lungs, liver, or other organs. These 
congestions evidently depended on a changed condition of 
the blood, which would seem to have been deficient both in 
albuminous and saline materials. A restricted use of green 
food, especially turnips, and a free allowance of good hay, cake, 
and corn, with a daily use of salt, alternated with the sulphite 
of soda, acted most beneficially in the cases which came imme- 
diately under the notice of the Professor of Cattle Pathology. 
(h.) Similar climatic conditions induced a large number of 
attacks of acute rheumatic fever amons: lambs. Some verv 
remarkable cases of the disease occurred in the county of Essex, 
in which the attacks were almost entirely confined to the male 
lambs, the disease following very closely on castration. The 
deaths were numerous, depending mostly on organic disease of 
the heart as shown on a post-mortem examination. Another 
peculiar feature of the malady was the loss of sight in a large 
