948 
THE HORSE PLAQUE. 
We thus see what history teaches us. It is because all 
this is known; because we now possess a certain knowledge 
of the foreign nature of the cattle plague; of its contagious 
properties, as the exclusive condition of its manifestation 
beyond its native country ; of the activity of its contagion ; 
of the diverse and multiple modes of its propagation and of 
its expansion; it is because, in fact, we know all the disasters 
that it inevitably entails when we allow its fire to kindle and 
increase, that the sacrifice of the smaller number ought to 
be required to protect and save the greater. 
The practice of compulsory slaughter is then essentially 
rational and scientific, because it has for its foundation the 
most exact knowledge, acquired by means of history, obser¬ 
vation, and experiment. 
I venture to hope that the Academy will consider me 
justified, in consequence of the gravity of existing circum¬ 
stances, in having arrested for some time its attention on this 
terrible murrain, which has been, and which still is, a cause 
of the greatest losses to our agriculture, and which inflicts 
such grave injuries on the public health.— Royal Agricultural 
Society’s Journal. 
THE HORSE PLAGUE. 
The following is extracted from the Missouri Democrat , 
St. Louis, October 25th. 
[From The Rochester Democrat, October 18th.] 
We hear with regret, but not with surprise, that the ma¬ 
lignant disease that has been reported as raging among the 
horses at Toronto, and which appeared a few days since at 
Buffalo, has broken out among the horses in this city. 
Thus far it has confined itself to horses in barns where a 
considerable number are kept. It is said to be quite prevalent 
in the stables of the Paper Company at Lower Falls. Some 
valuable horses used in drawing railroad freights have already 
died. The disease has not, we believe, yet appeared among 
the horses of the street-railway company, but when it does 
we may expect to see a suspension of business in that line as 
there has been at Toronto. 
The Buffalo Commercial Advertiser, October 18th, says : 
Some days ago an article appeared in these columns an- 
