856 
EDITORIAL OBSERVATIONS. 
regulations arc rarely or never acted upon. The local 
authorities can hardly he said to be the cause of this inac- 
tion, as the police in Ireland are not, as in England, 
under the control and at the disposal of the local authority 
of each separate county or borough. In Ireland, with the 
exception of the metropolis and its environs, the police 
throughout the entire country constitute one body with 
but one central controlling head, which is the Government, 
acting through the medium of the Inspector General of 
Constabulary. The carrying out of council orders here, for 
the prevention of infectious and contagious diseases among 
animals, may be said to be, to a great extent, a magisterial 
duty, and as sueh it became necessary in this country to 
vest the power of action in local authorities. In Ireland the 
case is different; the executive government there has all 
power of action, as well as the entire control of the machinery 
—the police—in its own hands, but it would seem that it 
hesitates to act. The English plan might be thought to be 
ineffective, being incompatible with unity of action through¬ 
out separately administered localities; yet, as matters have 
turned out, it is one which, with all its acknowledged and 
insuperable objections, has been more practically useful in 
its results than the more perfect system applicable to 
Ireland. The want of prompt action in Ireland is in 
clearly proving detrimental to the live stock property, 
not only of that country, but also of Great Britain, by 
facilitating the almost daily exportation of animals from 
infectiously diseased herds into England and Scotland. Even 
animals coming from healthy herds are likely to prove a 
source of mischief, travelling as they do in the holds of 
vessels and on railways with infected eattle. 
Irish stock exporters are loud in their protests that there 
is at present, and has been for the last two years, an unpre¬ 
cedented rareness in the occurrence of infectious or conta¬ 
gious diseases among cattle in Ireland. On the contrary, it 
is well known that pleuro-pneumonia continues to extend, 
and that even in the best managed herds it has assumed a 
malignity unknown for many years, the animals affected 
oftpn dying in from two to four days from the first appear- 
