EDITORIAL OBSERVATIONS. 
629 
Denmark, as an exporting country, is deeply concerned in 
maintaining a reputation for healthy stock, and we may trust 
to the authorities to adopt every possible precaution. We are 
not less concerned to preserve our stock in health; but we 
labour under the disadvantage of being an importing country 
instead of an exporting one, and wanting all the animal food 
which is likely to be sent us, we cannot adopt those sweeping 
measures of precaution which succeed in keeping out cattle 
diseases only by keeping out “ cattle of all races” at the 
same time. 
The arrival here, nevertheless, of cargo after cargo of in¬ 
fected animals in quick succession, at ports far distant from 
each other, is unprecedented in the history of the introduction 
of cattle plague into Great Britain. Within a fortnight, two 
cargoes came into London, two into Hartlepool, two into 
Newcastle, one into Leith, and one into Hull, in all 434 
cattle—which were either diseased or had been exposed 
several days to the infection—besides many sheep which 
came with them. Thus, a heavy strain was suddenly put 
upon the machinery created by the Government, but fortu¬ 
nately it proved equal to the emergency. Had it failed in 
any essential particular, cattle plague would have been estab¬ 
lished once more among us. The escape we have had is a 
narrow one, for security depended not only on the quick detec¬ 
tion of the disease, and the destruction of infecting material 
as centred in animals themselves, but in the disinfection, or 
otherwise dealing with matters, things, and persons, so as to 
prevent the materies morbi being carried to our cattle. After 
the experience we have had of the value of the present system 
of inspection, we may hope that the country will be some¬ 
what less excited when the next cargo of plague-stricken 
animals arrives upon our coast. 
