F. S. BILUNGS. 
91C> 
cargo of sheep afflicted with hooj and mouth disease at the port 
of Liverpool, the same having been shipped from Boston. It 
would be of immense benefit to the nation to know from whence 
these sheep came. Britain is becoming alarmed. Her already 
decimated flocks are threatened with attacks from an old enemy 
but from a new quarter. A new and promising trade is becom¬ 
ing daily endangered by the reports of outbreaks of one of the 
other of these animal pests. We stand, as a nation, imjyotent to 
check them. We are, in nearly every part of the country, in 
great want of competently educated veterinarians, to give able 
support to the people, by investigating the causes of these out¬ 
breaks, and by executing measures toward their restriction and 
gradual stamping out. The sheep in question were shipped from 
Boston, but from whence were they collected ? Port inspection 
is useless, unless it helps us to unravel these mysteries. From 
Massachusetts these sheep did not certainly come. Did they ac¬ 
quire the disease on the railroad, from transport in non-cleaned 
and non-disinfected cars, or were they rested in yards where hogs 
or cattle, complicated by the disease, had been previously confined ? 
Were the diseased sheep all of one lot, collected in one place, or 
had they been collected in small lots and placed together ? 
Which lot was the one originally diseased ? These and many 
other points are the ones the elucidation of which is only possible 
at the hands of competent and exactly educated veterinarians. 
During our short period of practice, we have given some little 
time to the study of glanders in and around our native city, Bos¬ 
ton. In a period of not over eight weeks, we have easily gained 
information of seven cases of horses infected with this loathsome 
disease. Five of these cases have been discovered in the public 
Wednesday market at Brighton, Mass. Three of these five horses 
have been offered and sold at public auction at the above-men¬ 
tioned place. All these horses have been driven heedlessly anti 
unrestrictedly over our public highways. No veterinary police 
inspection exists at the market in question. Yet the good old 
commonwealth lias a Board of Cattle Commissioners, supposed 
to exercise control over this and other animal pests. We are not 
entering into a personal war with these Commissioners. Far 
