EDITORIAL OBSERVATIONS. 937 
rent, and the plague have been carried to any part of the 
kingdom. 
Such possibilities may be contemplated calmly now that 
their realisation is not apprehended, but so long as they were 
possibilities they were by no means satisfactory subjects for 
reflection. The stamping-out system, as it is now arranged 
by the Act, was first successful at Patrington ; that is to say, 
the slaughter of all the cattle of infectious herds, as each 
herd became in turn infected, arrested the disease in a short 
time essentially because all the herds within reach of the 
infection were attacked and destroyed; cattle were few in 
this district, and those few r were divided into small lots of 
two, three, and four. Consequently the loss sustained w r as 
slight. 
At Bridlington the cattle were more numerous and the 
herds larger, and there also the disease spread from one pas¬ 
ture to the next; the slaughter of cattle which had been 
herded with diseased ones was only carried out at intervals 
and in certain cases, and the disease, consequently, lingered 
longer than at Patrington. Pocklington district had the 
largest cattle population, and although the measures attempted 
there by the local authorities w r ere generally more stringent 
than those employed in the other districts, the disease kept 
ahead of the repressive means for some time, and ultimately 
extended to a distance of five miles from the original centre. 
The one unsatisfactory phase in the history of the cattle 
plague at Pocklington is the fact that its spread was due to 
the preservation of three small herds, including a total of 
some twenty cattle which were pastured in three sides of the 
field in which the animals belonging to Mr. Berriman were 
attacked. No law existed under which the destruction of 
the three herds could be insisted on; and, unhappily for the 
district, there was no one to act on the plea of necessity 
which has no law. 
This single error being condoned, it is impossible to 
speak too highly of the energy which the local authorities 
displayed in stamping out the malady wherever it appeared ; 
and while we cannot avoid the conviction that the whole 
results might have been better, we are quite ready to admit 
that they might have been very much worse. 
