IMPORTATION OF FOREIGN CATTLE. 
677 
sected out by me below the knee. I should also add, that, for the 
sake of rendering it as little cumbersome as possible, I was about 
cutting the leg through at the knee ; but, coming across another lot 
of white bodies in the tendon, I desisted, and have sent it as it is. 
*** Lodged in the posterior parts of the section of diseased 
limb Mr. Vincent has been so kind as to send us, we find three 
cysts, one above the knee joint, of smaller size ; two below it, 
either of them large enough to hold a moderately-sized kidney 
potato, in whose form, though irregularly from being sacculous 
within, they are shaped. Their parietes consist of the faschia and 
cellular tissue in the vicinit} r , and their interior surfaces are as 
smooth almost as the linings of joints. Within their cavities are 
conglomerate masses of a pale, brownish, flesh-coloured hue, 
looking not unlike, at first sight, the convoluted surface of the 
cerebellum ; but proving to be when examined, and particularly 
when immersed in water, composed of agglutinated membranous 
corpuscles, which we are of opinion, with Dr. Everett, are species 
of hydatids. The case is curious, and, no doubt, rare ; though, 
now we have seen this specimen — not having seen the contents 
of the cyst upon the tendon of the grey horse, formerly sent by 
Mr. Vincent — we are inclined to think that similar cases have 
occurred, which have been mistaken for other diseases. We ought 
to have remarked that the cyst above the knee is lodged among 
the terminations of the bellies of the flexor muscles, at the place 
where they give rise to their tendons ; and that of the two cysts 
below the knee, one is situated at the side rather, between the 
suspensory ligament and the tendons; the other behind the flexor 
tendons, between them and the skin. — Edit. Vet. 
IMPORTATION OF FOREIGN CATTLE. 
By J. T. Hodgson, M.R.C.V.S. 
To the Editor of “ The Veterinarian .” 
Sir, — I BEG leave, through the medium of your Journal, to give 
a caution to agriculturists against the present mode of examination 
of the health of imported foreign cattle, as quite useless, as far as 
regards the security from contagion. I have been many years 
both in India and the north of Germany (Holstein), where, from 
difference of climate and agricultural economy, epidemic disease is 
more common than in the temperate climate, and with the im- 
