516 
PARLIAMENTARY INTELLIGENCE. 
free, but in 1869 sheep in the foreign cattle market known to be afflicted 
with foot.and-mouth disease were allowed to be dispersed throughout the 
country, and the effects became very soon apparent. The cost of foot-and- 
mouth disease could not be put at less than \l. per head, and it must have 
amounted to 100,000/. in the case of the Norfolk farmers alone. He did 
not go with Mr. J. Stuart Mill and others, who held that farmers would be 
recouped by the increased price ; farmers would rather have moderate prices 
if they could only retain their stock. (Hear.) His right lion, friend would 
tell him that when the Contagious Diseases (Animals) Bill was under discus- 
sion he advocated stringent home restrictions. So he did, but that was on 
condition that foreign cattle should be killed at the port of landing. On the 
10th of February a case of pleuro-pneumonia occurred in a herd of forty 
cattle. Six were attacked within a fortnight, and were entirely separated 
from the rest. All recovered except one, which had a chronic attack, 
lasting to the end of May. But the unfortunate farmer would not be per- 
mitted to remove his stock, because the farm was said to be an infected 
spot. Let his right hon. friend calculate how much that bullock which 
would not die and would not recover, and which its owner would not kill 
(a laugh), cost the county of Norfolk. But foreign stock might and did 
mix with diseased animals on the other side. He said so, because in May 
there were two cases of pleuro-pneumonia in different ships, and so advanced 
was the disease that the authorities had the carcasses of the animals de- 
stroyed. A recent order said the stock from Holland might come over 
here, and, after twelve hours’ quarantine, might go over the whole country. 
His right hon. friend might say that since the relaxation of the orders there 
had been an immense importation from Holland. But the reason was because 
Holland was suffering from a cold spring, the farmers there had no hay, there- 
fore they were sending over here an immense quantity of store stock. His 
right hon. friend might say that he had appointed an inspector at the other side 
of the water, but the inspector could not detect infection in its incubation. 
His right hon. friend had said the other day that Holland was free from dis- 
ease, meaning, no doubt, the cattle plague, for he could not have meant 
pleuro-pneumonia. In North Holland alone, from the 19th of March to 
the 22nd of April, 45 eattle died of this last disease, 206 affected by it 
were killed, 138 recovered, and 94 were left ill, making a total of 483 in 
that small province, from which we were to receive our store stock. Mr. 
Kilby, of Yorkshire, had sent out 4000 circulars to the principal agricultu- 
rists of this country asking for their experiences of the loss of stock during 
the last thirty years, and had also applied to some gentlemen in Wales and 
Scotland. He found that in some of the northern districts of Scotland 
and the remote counties of Wales they had no case whatever of the foot 
and mouth disease, or of pleuro-pneumonia. Did not that show most dis- 
tinctly that these were foreign diseases, because there was the same atmo- 
sphere in one part of the country as in another, and the cattle received, if 
anything, more severe treatment in the remote districts ? In the breeding 
counties Mr. Kilby found that the losses were 25 per cent, from lung dis- 
ease and 33 per cent, from foot-and-mouth disease, while in the grazing 
counties the losses were— from lung disease 90, and from foot-and-mouth 
disease 78 per cent., or 168 per cent, in all, showing that it was by the 
transit and mixing of cattle these dangerous diseases were propagated. 
In 1868 we had 3,769,000 cattle, worth about £56,000,000. Well, the 
losses in thirty years amounted to £83,000,000, or nearly once and a half 
the worth of the whole stock in 1868. So that a man in England during 
the last thirty years who had twenty head of stock lost the value of one 
every twelve months. As regards Norfolk, that was considerably under the 
mark, and his own losses had been very much more. Now, for the sake of 
