REPORT ON THE CATTLE PLAGUE. 
401 
Austrian dominions in the year 1856. And Consul-General 
Mansfield, in a despatch from Warsaw, states that from 
May 9th, 1856, to the date of his report, March 29th, 
1857, 20,000 beasts had been sacrificed in Poland alone. 
It has likewise been said that the French army lost in 
Samsoun, 8000 beasts out of 17,500 in the space of nine 
months, and that we lost during the same time 4000 out of 
10.000 from the pest — facts which may help to convey an 
idea of the hundreds of thousands which were swept away. 
Mr. Radcliffe, M.R.C.S., who lately held a commission in 
the Ottoman army, reports that, while he was stationed at 
Sinope, the murrain was developed towards the termination 
of the spring or early part of the summer of 1855, and that 
in the month of June it reached its acme. “ Scattered 
cases, ” he adds, “ occurred, however, from time to time until 
November, when, about the second or third week of the 
month, the disease broke out again with great fierceness, 
spread rapidly among the cattle in the depot and in the 
town, reached a second acme in about the termination of the 
month, declined during December, and ceased altogether in 
January, 1256.” 
Among many others also, Mr. Walton Mayer, V.S. to the 
“ Royal Engineer Field Equipment,” who was, during the 
war, attached to the Land Transport Corps, speaks of the 
existence of the disease in several parts of Turkey, and in 
the immediate neighbourhood of Constantinople, in the sum- 
mer of 1855. Early in the same year, in consequence of a 
considerable part of both Austrian and Russian Poland 
having become the seat of the disease, much apprehen- 
sion was shown lest it should cross the Prussian frontier. 
To prevent this the Prussian Government took the precau- 
tion of sending detachments of troops to all the points of 
egress below Thorn, with a view of cutting off the commu- 
nication with the infected localities. 
M. V. Schleinitz, president of the department of Brom- 
berg, in the province of Posen, in his official report, says, 
that <c itwas in the month of March, 1855, that we were 
obliged to order the frontier to be closed, which was first 
effected in pursuance of the directions in section 2 of the 
law of 1836. in October of the same year we were under 
the necessity, in consequence of the threatened approach of 
danger, of putting into force the severer directions of section 
3 respecting the closing of the frontier; and when, at the 
end of that month, intelligence, though not officially con- 
firmed, arrived here regarding the progress of the murrain, 
we caused the Polish district bordering upon our depart- 
XXXI. 53 
