942 SANITARY POLICE AND THE CATTLE PLAGUE. 
Hungarian empire, the frontiers of which, measuring more 
than 120 leagues, are difficult to close against smugglers, and 
the Steppes of which are characterised by cattle of the same 
race as the Steppes of Russia. Moreover, the Russian cattle 
furnish a considerable number of those required on the 
markets of the large towns, and for fattening in the great 
distilleries of Gallicia. Vienna alone consumes more than 
80,000 head per annum. In this state of affairs, the Con¬ 
ference was of opinion that it was not possible to close the 
frontiers of Austria against the importation of cattle from 
Russia; but that these beasts must not enter without 
restraint, and that it is necessary to continue to submit 
them, as heretofore, to a quarantine of ten days before they 
are allowed to continue their route towards the localities for 
which they are destined. 
I abstain from entering here into any details of the measures 
which have been proposed with a view to render these quaran¬ 
tines as efficacious as possible, and to submit the imported 
animals to a rigorous inspection, whether their immediate 
destination be the slaughter-house or the feeding-byre 
attached to a distillery. Doubtless these measures cannot 
give any certain guarantee against the cattle plague, but they 
must certainly diminish the chances in favour of it, because 
it is more advantageous for Austria to permit the importation 
of Russian cattle than to prevent it. 
Having once resolved the important question of the com¬ 
mercial relations of Russia with the adjacent countries, the 
Conference endeavoured to establish the principles which 
ought to serve as a basis of uniform regulations for all 
countries in which the cattle plague cannot be introduced, 
propagated, or maintained otherwise than by contagion. 
Thus if, in countries where the cattle plague is only an 
accident which can be rendered as transient as possible, the 
guarantee is given by the respective governments that they 
will adopt against it measures everywhere identical, and the 
certain efficacy of which, when they are rigorously and 
scrupulously applied, experience has proved, there will no 
longer exist any reason for the interruption of commercial 
relations between those countries, even when the presence of 
the plague has been detected in one or more of them. 
Now, what are the measures, the application of which in a 
uniform manner can, from the commercial point of view 7 , give 
this guarantee of impunity to the countries in which the 
cattle plague has made an accidental invasion, and has 
appeared in isolated localities ? 
The following are those which are most essential:— 
