56 
Report on the Agriculture of Belgium. 
and cattle from Belgium are insignificant compared willi those 
from Holland. 
{d) Pleuro-pneumonia. — Belgian farmers say they are not so mucS» 
troubled with this scourge as we are in England. They, almost 
without exception, "inoculate" for the disease, and (assuming thali 
they enjoy the immunity which they claim) we believed that they 
were justified in considering it a " sovereign remedy." But after 
reading Professor Simonds's reports on the subject * we have 
gone over the ground again, and we think it possible that two 
other conditions may help to ward off the disease. The first is 
that cattle in Belgium are not exposed to changes of temperature- 
and of weather to anything like the extent that they are in 
England, as we have already described. The next is that the 
food, in feeding establishments especially, contains more of the 
material from which alcohol is formed, e.g., distillery refuse and 
sugar-beet pulp (in which vinous fermentation has generally set up 
before it is given to the beasts), while where these materials are 
Avanting it is a favourite practice to put a mass of cut roots into 
a heap mixed with meal for about 12 hours — until fermentation 
has commenced — before giving them to the cows. As alcohol is 
said to have been used in France with great success, as a remedy 
for pleuro-pneumonia, it is possible that food capable of entering- 
into alcoholic and other fermentations may assist in jn-eventing 
the disease. 
The question of the efficacy of inoculation is again being 
investigated ; and we have made the foregoing remarks in the- 
hope that they may lead to other lines of enquiry being also 
taken up.t 
10. iSheep-feeding. — In the sugar-beet districts sheep-breeding 
is exceptional, therefore it will be more convenient to describe 
that department of farming when we are dealing with a district 
in which it possesses more importance. On some sugar-beetr 
farms, however, a large number of sheep are fed on beetroot-pul)> 
and a little cake or meal, farmers generally reckoning ten sheep 
to one ox,:j: and giving them food in that proportion. Thus, an 
* 'Journal Royal Agricultural Society,' vol. xiii., p. 373, and vol. xiv., p. 244^ 
t M. Leclerc states that pleuro-pneumonia has on several occasions made 
serious ravages in Belgium, particularly in the establishments of distillers, who 
feed a large number of beasts. No curative means are known. Dr. Willems, of 
Hasselt, has proposed inoculation as a preventive means. This method is practised 
by many distilleis and some farmers, -who maintain that it gives good results. 
However, the special commission instituted by the Government to investigate this 
system has not come to a positive conclusion after the numerous experiments 
■which they have carried on for several years. 
X This has led M. de Laveleye f ' Econoniie rurale de la Belgique ') to his mag- 
nanimous reduction of S to 1, when comparing the stock kept in England with> 
that kept in Belgium. He has forgotten the vast difference lietween the keep of ai 
sheep imported from tlie other side of the frontier half-fat, and worked olf in. 
