740 CATTLE DISEASE AND HIGH PRICE OF BUTCHERS 5 MEAT. 
cattle and sheep, and the only great consideration seems to 
be where are we to obtain store animals for making into fat 
ones ; that w r e should be visited with a plague among our 
herds in the shape of foot-and-mouth disease and pleuro-pneu- 
monia, if not as fatal as rinderpest, is at any rate extremely 
detrimental to the flesh productions of the land. There are 
some districts in this country where four out of every six 
farms are suffering from murrain. This has not been caused, 
as many people suppose, and some assert, who ought to know’ 
better, by unhealthy animals brought from foreign countries, 
but by the insufficiency of the inspection among our own 
breeds. I have not seen one single foreign animal at the 
quarantine yard, w’here I am pretty frequently, or in the 
cattle market, where I am nearly always on Tuesdays, affected 
with disease; but I have seen several English ones, both on 
fairs and markets, w 7 hich have had unmistakable signs of 
foot-and-mouth disease. A certain section in this country 
are continually crying dow 7 n the importation of stock from 
abroad, and whenever disease appears among our ow r n herds 
set it down to the debit of the foreigner. This is utter folly 
and prejudice. Whatever may have been the origin of mur- 
rain and pleuro-pneumonia, they have now 7 been so long 
known in this country that w r e may fairly call them indigenous 
to it. Why, in the valleys of the Wansbeck and the Pont, 
w^here one of them is now raging with all its virulence, a 
foreign animal has never been imported — has never indeed 
come within twenty miles. Such I believe to be the case all 
over England and Scotland w 7 herever the disease is. Why, 
then, should we lay the blame on foreign importation ? The 
restriction upon cargoes coming here are severe and manifold 
enough for our safety ; and perhaps for the information of 
the uninitiated, I may recapitulate a few of them. They are 
as follows: All cattle except from w 7 ell-ascertained uninfected 
countries are slaughtered at the point of landing. Those from 
non-infected countries are inspected when shipped and un- 
shipped, perform quarantine for tw r elve hours in separate 
places assigned for each country, and then are sold in a 
market. The inspector can retain them as long as he likes if 
not satisfied. No vessel that has carried cattle from what is 
considered an infected country can carry from a non-infected 
one for the period of three months, under a penalty of several 
hundreds of pounds. The countries which are considered 
free do not admit home stock of any description into them, 
not even from England. The fault that we are now 7 suffering 
from disease lies, I think, with the management of our home 
breeds ; not because the restrictions upon the movements of 
