EDITORIAL OBSERVATIONS. 
207 
Sincerely do we hope that our gloomy anticipations with 
regard to Australia may not be realised ; but long experience 
of the disease leads to the conclusion that they will, unless 
preventive measures, built on a scientific basis, are con¬ 
joined with those of the legislature. 
The writer of the article on “Agriculture and its prospects” 
from which we quote, after describing the state of the crops, 
of the country, and the character of the weather, which he 
says was wet beyond all precedent, goes on to observe: 
But these untimely rains have not been an unmixed evil, 
for they have prolonged the period of a continuance of good 
feed for stock, and there is little fear of the present plentiful 
supply of good meat falling off during the summer. The 
grass has everywhere taken a strong, fresh growth, and the 
ground is so well saturated that the bush fires will be late, 
and not, most probably, very extensive, and where they do 
occur will be quickly succeeded by fresh herbage. In this 
the stock-owners have one great advantage just now, which 
can be fully enjoyed by those who have confined their atten¬ 
tion to sheep, but is qualified to the owners of cattle by the 
great risk they run of having pleuro-pneumonia very shortly 
amongst their herds. Notwithstanding the spirited efforts 
made by a few of them when this disease first appeared here, 
it has spread over a rather large extent of the thickly-settled 
country near Melbourne, and may possibly be even now on 
some of the large runs of the interior. As to whence we 
received it, and how it has been spread here, there can be no 
doubt. An imported shorthorn cow brought it from Eng¬ 
land, although she was, to all appearance, sound when put 
on board ship, and during the whole of the passage. On 
inquiry, however, after the mischief was done, it turned out 
that this cow had a slight attack some two years previously, 
of which she was declared at the time to be perfectly cured; 
but the cure was but temporary and apparent, and the dis¬ 
ease broke out in her here in a more virulent form, quickly 
spreading to the other cattle on the same farm. Had an Act 
been then passed by the Legislature to authorise the inspec¬ 
tion of all suspected cattle, the care of a few weeks or months, 
and the expenditure of a small sum of money, would have 
eradicated the disease for the time, and a strict examination 
of all such as are imported, and the requirement of proof 
that they had never been affected, would have kept the 
country free from it; but our legislators were not alive to the 
