CATTLE DISEASES. 
235 
to the weather, dense packing on board ship or in confined 
spaces, fatigue, and insufficient or improper food or water, 
will predispose to, or excite diseases of a most formidable 
character; hence it is that in the rear of all large armies in 
the field epizootics of a fatal tendency are almost certain to 
become manifest among horses as well as cattle, and thus oc¬ 
casion serious loss. 
In the Crimea, I was encamped near a large division of the 
English Commissariat, and so great were the depredations 
caused by typhus and dysentery among the cattle, that I was 
frequently asked to give my opinion as to remedial measures. 
From what I could learn, these animals were shipped in good 
health, and their appearance certainly went far to prove that 
they had not been suffering from any chronic disease, but 
that their ill health had commenced with the hardships and 
privations of transport on ship board, and the inclement 
weather and insufficient food after landing. The French 
losses in the winter and spring of 1856 were much heavier 
than ours—apparently from the fact that their ships were 
more crowded, and cleanliness was less attended to. 
I took every opportunity of satisfying myself as to the con¬ 
tagious or non-contagious nature of the epizootic, and am 
decidedly of opinion that there was nothing to induce anyone 
to consider the disease as contagious or infectious. 
No malady of a like character made its appearance among 
the oxen belonging to the Tartars, or the other landed pro¬ 
prietors, either in the valley of Baidar, or towards Simphero- 
pol, so far as I could learn. 
The British troops provisioned on these cattle,—I will not 
assert that the animals which had died were issued as food—■ 
were never in better health. 
In the spring of '60, when it had been determined to de¬ 
spatch a large expeditionary force to the north of China, large 
depots of cattle were collected at Hong Kong for the purpose of 
supplying the army with meat, as well as land transport. 
These beasts were purchased and brought from great distances 
in the interior of China, and were conveyed down the rivers 
towards Hong Kong in small 'san-pans or native boats, hud¬ 
dled as closely as they could be crammed, and though perhaps 
kept in tolerable condition by hay, yet they must have suf¬ 
fered much from the long confinement, want of w r ater, and 
extremes of temperature, as well as the heavy evening mists. 
The consequences were, that no sooner had they arrived at 
the depots than numbers were attacked with acute dysentery 
of so severe a character that death often took place in twelve 
hours from the beginning of the attack. 
