REVIEW. 
221 
a lot of young cattle of my own breeding. They were 
grazing in a field by themselves, and had never at any time 
come into contact with any other stock. Where infection 
could possibly come from I never could conceive, as at that 
time the disease was unknown in this district ; but one after 
another was seized at short intervals, till three of them died. 
The others were kept on, and continued perfectly healthy. 
The disease made its appearance amongst my feeding stock 
in the ensuing winter, and during that and several succeeding 
seasons I suffered very severely. Curiously enough, my 
immediate neighbours had not a case for a considerable time 
after it got a footing here ; whilst some others, at a few miles 
distance, were as bad as myself. From all I could observe 
regarding it, I became convinced that the disease was not 
infectious ; and acting^ upon this belief, when many of my 
neighbours were taking all manner of precautions — white- 
washing, &o. — some of them even going so far that they 
would not enter my courts for fear of carrying infection to 
their own, I continued to pursue uniformly the same course 
as I had done before it made its appearance. By-and-bye, 
in spite of all precautions, it found its way into the other 
stocks round about, and they suffered as much as my own 
had done. 
“ f I never could say whether court or byre feeding was 
the more favorable for its development, as it used to skip 
about from one to the other, up and down, both in a manner 
altogether inexplicable, sometimes confining its attack to one 
lot of cattle, and again wandering, apparently at random, 
through them all. Whenever a case was observed in the 
byre, the animal was sent off, and another put in its stall, 
without previous fumigation, washing, or even removing the 
turnips the diseased animal had been eating. This I did 
very frequently, pretty much by way of experiment, and in 
no case could I ever trace any bad effects to having done so. 
One rather strong case I may mention, which much con- 
firmed me in my practice. In 1846, a lot of cattle suffered 
so severely at grass that I determined to sell off the re- 
mainder, and when buying a lot to replace them the salesman 
told me that they belonged to a friend of mine, who was 
disposing of them because so many of them had gone with 
disease, and he could not put them into my hands without 
warning me. Thanking tbe agent for his candour, 7 bought 
the cattle, and put them into a court, with only a wall 
dividing them from another lot. I had not in either of those 
two lots a single case of disease. Its visits for some seasons 
past have been comparatively rare — occasionally a whole 
16 
XLIII. 
