REPORT ON THE CATTLE PLAGUE. 
217 
a distinction between “ rinderpest and pulmonary murrain 
but he adds, i{ both are equally contagious and almost equally 
fatal , and in a sanitary point of view may , in fact , be regarded as 
identical .” 
Mr. Blackwell next gives, in the despatch of May 30th, an 
epitome of the works in question, and under the heading of 
the steppe murrain, he says, that it has been calculated 
that during the last century alone, this murrain carried off 
28,000,000 head of cattle in Germany ; and in the whole of 
Europe, including Russia, but exclusive of Siberia and 
Tartary, upwards of 200,000,000;” and that “although the 
disease which has broken out among the horned cattle in Mecklen- 
burg seems to be regarded as the pulmonary murrain , pleuro-pneu - 
monia , it may perhaps be the real steppe murrain , which is now 
raging in Poland to a fearful extent , notwithstanding the stringent 
measures that have been adopted by the Russian Government for 
putting a stop to it.” 
In a despatch dated September 17th, the same gentleman 
reports that the murrain had extended to Holstein, and that 
in consequence of this the regulations of the Liibeck Govern- 
ment were enforced with regard to that Duchy, as well as 
Mecklenburg. He concludes his communication by ob- 
serving that, “ as this highly contagious murrain has spread from 
the steppes of South Russia , through Poland, Prussia , and Meck- 
lenburg to Holstein , to a district from which the English market is 
supplied with cattle , I must beg leave to call the attention of her 
Majesty's Government to my Report of its origin, progress, treat- 
me7it, symptoms , 8fc., transmitted on the 30th of May last .” 
These statements could not fail to add to the alarm which 
was originally felt in this country; and when it is considered 
that for several months afterwards scarcely a week elapsed 
without intelligence reaching us that “ the cattle murrain” 
was spreading, the surprise becomes the greater rather than 
otherwise, that some measures of a preventive nature were 
not earlier adopted by her Majesty’s Government. It is true 
that the reports from other British consuls did not fully bear 
out Mr. Blackwell’s statements, but still nothing satisfactory 
could be learned of the true nature of the malady; and up to 
the time of the three National Agricultural Societies deter- 
mining on sending a commission to investigate the subject, 
the English public were left in a state of uncertainty and 
doubt. 
In October, 1856, we find that the restrictions against the 
entrance of cattle into Liibeck from Mecklenburg were re- 
moved, as pleuro-pneumonia appeared to have ceased there ; 
but they were again enforced in February following, as the 
