IMPORTATION OF CATTLE. 
77 
what is called farcy and glanders, or, as his own veterinary 
inspector , he would have waited at least from five to eight days 
after the horses had been landed before he had purchased these 
horses. 
In like manner, cattle and sheep brought in the hold from 
Scotland, Ireland, or the Continent, may have passed the Custom¬ 
house veterinary inspectors at the different ports of England with 
fever upon them. All have not been fat, and to be killed im¬ 
mediately; some have been store cattle, and fattened in our 
marshes, or in the stall; but, whether or not fever has been 
produced in this manner, and contagion afterwards from the matter 
of the local disease, I leave for those veterinary surgeons to 
determine who have been in country practice. 
I do not know if the Custom-house veterinary inspectors ex¬ 
amine cattle and sheep that arrive by steamers from Scotland 
or Ireland; but we shall get returns of the numbers imported from 
the Continent, and that only “ one sheep ” was diseased. But 
how do they know what has happened afterwards 1 There are 
no district veterinary surgeons to give a statistical account of that. 
Through the medium of your excellent Journal, and from your 
able country correspondents only, shall we obtain correct know¬ 
ledge upon these points, as it is those gentlemen only that have 
had opportunities of seeing these diseases in the marshes —in the 
homesteads. 
The fairs and markets are not places (although here they are 
occasionally seen) to look for diseased animals, excepting horses 
in England; and why this should be allowed here more than on 
the continent of Europe requires some explanation. This differ¬ 
ence in the veterinary jurisprudence of ours and other countries is 
antecedent to the new tariff; but whether or not we have suffered 
by our temerity in respect to infectious and contagious diseases, 
my professional brethren will best determine. I can write only 
on diseases as I have seen them abroad. In your Journal (which 
I have only seen occasionally) there is difference of opinion on the 
infectious , though none on the contagious nature of the disease 
I am writing about. The older veterinary writers, if my memory 
does not fail, believed them to be infectious as well as contagious. 
Professor Stewart, in vol. x, No. 51, writes “ Contagion is a fertile 
source, and I cannot say I have been able to trace the disease to 
any other.” 
“ In a stud of about one hundred and twenty horses, one came 
off a journey with the disease. He was kept out of the yard, and 
he was the only sufferer.” 
l// 
VOL. XXII. 
