MORTALITY AMONG CATTLE AT THE CAPE. 
729 
The subject discussed by the Committee is most im- 
portant; but we must, in all friendliness, say, that if the 
members of the Committee wish to direct public attention 
seriously to so great an evil, they must produce a much more 
vigorous, scientific, and concise report. To those interested 
in the subject of diseased animal food, we would direct 
attention to a series of replies by M. Soumille, of Avignon, 
to certain inquiries issued in 1854 by the Imperial and 
Central Society of Veterinary Medicine of France. — See 
Gazette des Hopitaux, October 14th, 1854. — Journal of Public 
Health. 
ON THE PREVALENCE OF PLEURO-PNEUMONIA AT THE 
CAPE OF GOOD HOPE. 
A gentleman with whom we were in conversation the 
other day, and who had recently returned from the Cape, 
informs us that pleuro-pneumonia was still producing sad 
ravages among the cattle there. We extract the following 
account from the c Farmer’s Magazine.’ 
“What between the raids of the native tribes, who make 
terrible onslaught upon the sheep and cattle of the border 
farmers in the Cape colony, and upon those of the Dutch 
emigrant boers settled in the free states farther north, and 
the fearful horse sickness and ‘ lung-disease 5 (as it is locally 
termed) prevailing, the colonists of Southern Africa are suf- 
fering dreadfully just now in the losses of their stock. 
“Although new and unknown until within a few years 
in the Cape colony, pleuro-pneumonia has been a fearful 
scourge in other parts of the globe for some time past. The 
history of an epidemic among cattle, which raged in Sicily 
212 years before the Christian era, described by the poet 
Scilius Italicus, paints the disease of modern times with 
almost perfect accuracy. In 1693 the principality of Hesse 
lost the greater part of its cattle by malignant inflammation 
of the lungs. The symptoms of the disease clearly show 
that it commences in the respiratory system, and that the 
danger consists in the intensity of the inflammatory action in 
the early stage, and the degree in which the vital power is 
exhausted ; for disease of a malignant and typhoid character 
usually succeeds. 
“The history, nature, pathology, and treatment of the 
epidemic were well detailed in a paper by Dr. James Mercer, 
of Edinburgh, which will be found in the 4 Farmer’s Maga- 
zine’ (vol. xviii, p. 35) for July, 1848. The opinion of some 
xxix. 93 
