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THE VETERINARIAN, OCTOBER 1, 1871. 
Ne quid falsi dicer e audeat, ne quid veri non audeat. — C icero. 
THE SPREAD OE EOOT-AND-MOUTH DISEASE. 
FooT-and-mouth disease is still on the increase in many 
parts of Great Britain as well as Ireland, and appears 
likely to attain dimensions which it has seldom reached 
since its first incursion. The infected counties in England 
and Scotland now number 76, while the centres of the 
malady have risen during the past month from 2444 to 9796. 
The mortality ordinarily resulting from the disease is small ; 
but, nevertheless, the loss which the country sustains from 
the diminished value and wasted condition of the animals, 
the lessened amount of milk, butter, and cheese, together 
with the serious interruption to the cattle trade caused by 
these continous outbreaks, is in the aggregate very large. 
The main cause of the greater part of these evils is clearly 
traceable to the very imperfect manner the law is adminis- 
tered. In many districts the provisions of the Contagious 
Diseases [Animals) Act are wofully misapplied, in others 
they are almost totally neglected, while in not a few they 
are strained to a point which make them so vexatious as to 
lead to every kind of evasion. 
The statements put forth by many of the local papers 
are eminently calculated to mislead both cattle owners 
and the public in general. Among other incorrect state- 
ments with regard to the importation of store stock, we 
find one in the Norfolk News. Speaking of the foot-and- 
mouth disease the writer says that, “ with the present regu- 
lations for the importation of store stock by which foreign 
cattle from all countries, save France and Russia, may pass 
inland after twelve hours’ quarantine, it is no use taking 
any great or vigorous precautions against this or, indeed, 
any other cattle disease.” 
Now the facts are the very opposite, for while a total 
prohibition exists with regard to France, the cattle coming 
from Germany as a whole, the dominions of the empire of 
Russia, the Austrian- Hungarian empire, the dominions of 
