THE LATE EPIDEMIC DISEASE IN FRANCE. 
•287 
It was in the neighbourhood of Pacy-sur-Eure that the flocks 
usually discovered the first symptoms of cocotte , but we were 
far— says M. Levigny — from foreseeing the extent of the evil. 
The progress of the epizootic was slow, it is true; but it was con- 
tinually advancing from the east towards the west. It was a 
full year in the valley of Auge before it appeared in Bessin ; but, 
having arrived there, the greatest degree of consternation ensued, 
for the principal part of the riches of the country consisted in 
their numerous troops of milch cattle. The secretion of milk 
ceasing, or much diminishing, might prove the perfect ruin of 
the farmers, who had no resource for the payment of their land- 
lord but the butter which they sent to Paris. 
Their fears were increased when the epizootic approached 
within a few leagues of Bessin. The markets and the fair§ for 
cattle were deserted, no one daring to send them there, either 
from the fear of not being able to sell them, or lest they might 
mingle with infected animals. 
These precautions, however, were useless. The epizootic at 
length reached them. It was in the month of May, says M. 
Levigny, that I had occasion to observe the disease in a cow 
belonging to M. Enault, of Isigny. I was on horseback when it 
was driven by. I thought that there was something peculiar 
about it, and was inclined to imagine that it laboured under some 
aphthous sporadic disease. Two days afterwards I was requested 
to examine this cow. I did so attentively, and, remembering the 
accounts which had been given by the journals of veterinary me- 
dicine, I immediately recognized the prevailing epizootic. 
The six cows that were with her soon became infected. The 
bull that had accompanied them, having leaped the ditch, found 
his way to a herd of fifteen cows, all of whom became in a few 
days infected by the disease. The proprietor having driven some 
of these cows to his yard, the contagion was not slow in commu- 
nicating itself to his pigs, and by means of them four other herds 
of cows were attacked by the disease. 
During the summer of 1840, the epizootic spread itself in the 
proportion of one in eight. In the autumn the cases were few. 
The winter presented more ; but in the spring of 1841 the invasion 
of the disease was fearful. It seemed to spare nothing. All 
that had resisted the epidemic in preceding years was now over- 
thrown. The attack was more fearful every day ; and when by 
chance it spared for a little while a farm or plat of herbage — where 
there was a number of cattle, it soon attacked and destroyed the 
greater part of them. At the moment that I write this, 1 only 
know five or six farms exempt from this disease, and can count 
scarcely three hundred horned beasts in more than twenty 
