CATTLE DISEASES. 
237 
purchased at a high rate for purposes of transport, but scarcely 
were they embarked for China when they were attacked by 
diarrhoea, and this, with low fever, carried off a great number, 
leaving the others useless, save as food. 
To exhibit still further the influence of confinement and 
an unnatural mode of life in the production of disease, I may 
refer to another unfortunate outbreak of an epizootic which 
also occasioned a good deal of loss and inconvenience. For 
the rationing of the Sikh troops employed in the expedition, 
a large number of goats—diminutive creatures not much 
larger than an antelope—-were purchased in Chusan and the 
neighbouring islands. These were in perfect health when 
purchased, but after being collected in droves and put on 
ship-board, catarrhal fever made its appearance among them, 
and scores died just as dogs die in distemper. One ship 
sailed from Chusan with some 350 on board, and arrived at 
Talien-whan with about thirty or forty. 
Even the sheep brought from Shanghai and other places 
did not escape similar diseases, though there was no possi¬ 
bility of their having derived them from contagious sources. 
Thus far I have traced some diseases which, I am certain, 
owed their origin to hardships and altered conditions of life. 
With regard to their contagiousness, I could discover no 
facts to satisfy me that they were so; and though every 
care was exercised to segregate the sound from the unsound 
as quickly as possible, yet they did not seem to be checked 
in the slightest degree. But concerning their non-contagious¬ 
ness, there is one fact which, I think, deserves special men¬ 
tion. At one of the Hong Kong depots, when the Chinese 
oxen were dying by the dozen, a battery of Indian gun bul¬ 
locks was encamped for more than a fortnight within a few 
yards of the diseased, yet not a single one was attacked by 
the epizootic, either then or during the campaign, and the 
same immunity existed also amongst the oxen employed by 
the Chinese in the rice fields around these depots, as well as 
amongst the cattle kept by Europeans in Victoria, a mile or 
two away. 
The Chinese gladly avail themselves of the glorious oppor¬ 
tunity afforded of laying in a stock of provisions by removing 
all the dead bodies from the camps, or dragging them from 
the ships to the shore, there to be dressed and prepared as 
food ; and neither among them nor yet among the European 
sailors, who were not slow in cooking and eating this diseased 
meat when they got the opportunity, did I hear of any 
dreadful pestilence having punished them for their temerity. 
I have thus endeavoured to lay before your readers, and 
