The Canker of the Larch. 
299 
out and regularly disinfected, the losses from this cause are 
capable of being reduced to a minimum. 
Tuberculosis, more generally known to dairy farmers as 
grapes, is a fatal and dangerous disease. As affecting cattle, it is 
attributed to close breeding, but although common in the dairy 
districts I am strongly of opinion that its origin and continuance 
are due to an entirely different cause. There is no inbreeding, 
strictly speaking, in the dairy counties. The bulls are allowed 
to range the pastures with the cows, and for obvious reasons 
are seldom used more than one year, whilst they are obtained 
from widely-different sources. Although, in many cases, the 
disease may have become hereditaiy, tuberculosis follows the trail 
of the grain waggon. Wherever brewers' grains are largely used, 
there cases of tuberculosis will be found most numerous. At 
no stage of the disease is either the flesh or the milk fit for 
human food. This is a disease that can only be stamped out 
by compensating the owner. Experienced stockmen detect the 
disease at the earliest stages of development. The occasional 
weak, hoarse grunt which is as yet the only symptom is seldom 
mistaken, and the animal is at once sent to the auction and 
passes to a new owner. Except under the conditions we have 
mentioned the disease is not extensively prevalent, and could 
be stamped out at a trifling cost. Once admit the system ot 
compensation, and every case would be reported on its first 
detection. To insure this it would be desirable to frame a code 
of stringent regulations imposing a heavy penalty on the owner 
who failed or neglected to immediately report a case, or supposed 
case, of the disease. 
Gilbert Murray. 
THE CANKER OF THE LARCH. 
In the spring of last year the attention of the Consulting Bota- 
nist of the Royal Agricultural Society was called by Lord More- 
ton to the extraordinary prevalence of the canker of larch-trees 
at Sarsden, Oxon, where a large plantation on the property of 
the Earl of Ducie was affected by the disease ; and by Mr. 
Faunce de Laune to its occurrence at Sharsted in Kent, where 
in two different copses nearly half the trees were cankered. 
The disease seriously affects the plantations in Kent where 
this tree is grown for hop-poles ; its results however are much 
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