20 
EDITORIAL OBSERVATIONS. 
examined before the certificate which authorised their re¬ 
moval from the metropolis was signed. The vans in which 
they were brought from the several railway stations were 
disinfected before being used ; and again cleansed and disin¬ 
fected previous to their being required for the conveyance of 
the cattle either out of the metropolitan area^ or to any railway 
station within the area. With such precautions, carried out 
as they were under proper supervision, no danger was to be 
apprehended. All such enforced measures of precaution, 
however, are opposed to that feeling of independence which 
is becoming so very characteristic of the people of the 
period; and hence restrictions are not submitted to, and 
instructions are not complied with in a spirit of superabun¬ 
dant alacrity, nor without a reasonable amount of grumbling. 
These trifling drawbacks do not seriously impair the 
efficacy of the means employed, and the results are seen 
in the improved health of stock all over the country. 
Nothing can be more instructive than to compare the 
sanitary condition of cattle at the shows that have taken 
place since the cattle plague restrictions have been in force, 
with that which used to be commonly noticed wherever a 
large number of animals were collected together. Mouth 
and foot disease was reckoned to be one of the contingen¬ 
cies, and outbreaks of pleuro-pneumonia were by no means 
uncommon. Now, although both these affections prevail in 
many parts in the country, one of them extensively in the 
metropolis, not a single case of either disease has been 
detected during the last two or three exhibitions of the 
Smithfield Club; and, it may be remarked, that the health 
of the stock at the Birmingham shows has been equally 
satisfactory. Much of this immunity is due, we are con¬ 
vinced, to the knowledge which farmers has acquired in the 
last year or two of the immense importance of a rigid 
adherence to hygienic rules. The cattle plague taught stock 
owners the precise significance of isolation as a means of 
combating contagious maladies. 
The advantages of the stamping out system” in dealing 
with such affections as pleuro-pneumonia, sheep pox, and 
cattle plague, are now so universally admitted, that we may 
fairly set aside any apprehension of a serious spread of these 
