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THE VETERINARIAN, NOVEMBER 1, 1847. 
Ne quid falsi dicere audeat, ne quid veri non audeat. — CicEno. 
It is not to be expected that we are to import animals from 
other countries into our own without entailing on our indigenous 
stock more or less of those evils to which such foreign anirrials 
may be especially obnoxious, supposing even we preserve our 
native breeds untainted. The fact of disease, and of disease of a 
more fatal nature, being more prevalent among foreign horses and 
cattle and sheep than among our own, we believe admits of no 
denial. Glanders and farcy continue rife among horses in many 
parts of the continent, while in Britain, through improved stable 
regimen, cleanliness, and ventilation, such diseases have become 
comparatively rare. In the French cavalry the average losses of 
horses annually amount to eight per cent., while in our own cavalry 
the mortality does not reach half that per centage. The vesicular dis- 
ease and the pleuro-pneumonia, epizootics unknown in former days 
in our country, are both importations from abroad. And recently 
has landed among us a disease, which, unless our farmers and gra- 
ziers resolve to set up a cordon sanitaire, seems likely to spread 
over the country and destroy hundreds of our sheep. The wisest 
policy for them will be, to have nothing whatever to do with foreign 
sheep ; but supposing they do, then on no account whatever to 
permit such sheep, or even persons that have tended on such sheep, 
to commingle or come in contact with their own native flocks : the 
ovine pox , as the disease is called, being beyond doubt proved to 
be — the same as small-pox in man, to which it is nearly allied, if 
not identical in nature — highly contagious. Should Government, 
as it is to be hoped they will, adopt at once, in regard to the im- 
portation of foreign sheep, such measures of inspection or quaran- 
tine as will prohibit the sale, if not the disembarkation, of sheep 
either actually in a state of disease or even suspected of having 
the seeds of disease and contagion among them, probably we shall 
hear little or nothing more about the ovine pox. On the other 
