798 CAUSES OF SPREAD OF FOOT AND MOUTH DISEASE. 
and refuses to report them so. I have known cases of chronic 
lameness, both with and without any eruption about the feet, 
assigned by policemen as a sufficient reason for keeping farms 
under restrictions for weeks longer than was at all requisite, 
thereby subjecting the occupiers to much loss and inconveni- 
ence. Should the farmer complain of this, or refuse to accept 
the policeman’s decision as correct, he is told to get a veteri- 
nary surgeon’s certificate, at Ms own expense , and, if the cer- 
tificate he favorable and satisfactory to the chief constable, 
his cattle are at length set free. 
While the disease exists on a farm the diseased cattle are 
very rarely, with the exception of not being allowed to go 
upon a highway, placed under any real restrictions. They 
may rub noses over the boundary fences with neighbouring 
herds, and so infect all the cattle on the adjoining pastures ; 
and they are left at perfect liberty to supply gratis a dose of 
infection to all cattle travelling along the contiguous high- 
ways which may think proper, in a friendly way, to rub 
noses with them over the fences or gates. 
I have mentioned that my first case of the disease in the 
present outbreak was in a cow belonging to a person whose 
premises were near a railway station where a large cattle 
traffic is carried on. This animal was confined in a shed ; 
but her companions, while still ill, were kept in a field, with 
low fences, having the road to the railway cattle-yard on one 
side and a turnpike road on another. A better position for 
infecting the cattle passing from this important railway centre 
into the* surrounding country, or vice versa , could hardly have 
been chosen, yet here the diseased animals remained the 
whole of the time they were ill ! 
Here is another fact or two with regard to police inspec- 
tion. There is a stock of cows within a distance of a few 
miles of my residence, out of which eight have died of pleuro- 
pneumonia within the last six or eight weeks. The cattle 
are located in a field almost surrounded by Mghways , and the 
sick have been allowed to remain with the healthy until they 
apparently got better or died. 
Again, a few months ago I visited a stock about ten miles 
hence, in which pleuro-pneumonia had appeared, and found 
that three or four sick and dying animals were left in the 
same cow-house with the healthy ones. On my remonstrating 
with the owner, he said he had no means of separating them. 
The sick and healthy were housed together at night, and 
turned together into the same pasture by day. I saw some 
cattle belonging to two, if not three, neighbours pasturing in 
adjoining fields , and was informed, in reply to my inquiries, 
