712 OBSERVATIONS ON THE LUNG PLAGUE OF CATTLE. 
the perpetuation of the plague on this continent has been the 
mingling of cattle on unfenced grounds, and it is now clear that 
it is not the mingling alone, but also the pasturage on the same 
place successively that is particularly dangerous. The contrast 
in results, as seen on a large scale, is sufficiently important to be 
quoted. In New Jersey and Pennsylvania, where the use of 
common unfenced pasturages was allowed, the lung plague is 
still very widely prevalent after a year’s work for its extermina¬ 
tion. In New York, wherever it was possible to prevent such 
common pasturage the plague was definitely exterminated, though 
for half of the year lack of means prevented the prosecution of 
the work of extinction so vigorously as could be wished. Six 
out of eight infected counties were virtually cleared, and the 
seventh (Queens Co.) was also purified except on its border 
adjoining Brooklyn (Kings Co., the eighth). In Brooklyn alone 
did the plague continue with little mitigation, for in Brooklyn 
the aldermen passed an ordinance authorising pasturage in 
common on unfenced lots, in defiance of the State law, and 
abolished the cattle pounds, and in Brooklyn the police magi¬ 
strates dismissed delinquents brought before them for violation 
of the State law, and reprimanded the officers who arrested them. 
The future may be predicted from the past. If the other 
infected states continued to allow the propagation of the plague 
by the common use of unfenced pasturages, and to allow cattle 
of all kinds to mingle and infect each other in their markets, 
they may spend hundreds of thousands on suppressive measures, 
but the plague will survive and the nation will continue to 
lose its millions annually, whereas the loss now sustained in a 
single year, if faithfully and intelligently applied, would for 
ever rid the country of the pestilence. If the Brooklyn city 
officials are to be allowed to defy the law in the future as in 
the past, the splendid success of the first year’s work outside 
that plague-spot will not be consummated for the entire com¬ 
monwealth, but appropriations will be demanded, and an ex¬ 
pensive guardianship must be maintained year after year 
with the greatest uncertainty as to the final extinction of the 
virus. 
2. “ Swill/ 3 That “ swill” is not the cause of lung plague 
is well enough known to all who have made a study of the 
affection. Distillers’ and brewers’ “ swill ” is fed in all the 
large western cities ’where the lung plague is absolutely un¬ 
known. The same is true of swill-fed cattle kept in infected 
districts, but which have never been exposed to contagion. For 
three months in the end of 1879, and three more in the begin¬ 
ning of 1880, over 700 western steers were kept in the Blissville 
distillery stables that had proved so fatal in the spring of 1879. 
