332 
JAMES LAW. 
It will be seen that we bear the palm for numbers of all kinds of 
live stock. In sheep alone do they approach us, though even there they 
leave us a magnificent lead. In all others we exceed them by three, 
four, and even five times. What, then, are the relative precautions that 
we have adopted for the preservation of this splendid array of wealth ? 
Prussia, with a little over a third of our live stock, has five veterinary 
colleges—at Berlin, Stuttgard, Dresden, Hanover and Munich—main¬ 
tained at State expense, and furnished with ample subjects and pecuniary 
assistance for experimental investigation when judged necessary. Eng¬ 
land, with less than half our live stock, has four veterinary colleges— 
one in London, two in Edinburgh, and one in Glasgow—all independent 
of government aid, being either simple personal ventures, assisted by 
agricultural societies, or, as in the case of the old Edinburgh College, 
sustained by private endowment. One effect of this divorce of State 
and veterinary colleges may be seen in the result of the recent outbreak 
of rinderpest, which, in Prussia, was promptly extinguished within a 
week, whereas in England it smouldered for months before a committee 
of the House of Commons had time to fully consider what ought to be 
done. In the former outbreak of 1865, for which England was still less 
prepared, the disease was allowed to increase for six nionths, and its 
victims already amounted to 17,000 head per week before efficient 
measures for its extinction could be inaugurated. On that occasion 
England lost over $40,000,000 in the space of eighteen months. 
GOVERNMENT ACTION NEEDED. 
Some power ought to be vested in the central government, and the 
power of taking measures to exclude and extinguish animal plagues is 
one of them. As well appoint a commission to deliberate as to whether 
the striking of matches in a powder magazine should be permitted to 
continue, or take a vote of the passengers as to whether the engine 
should be reversed and the brakes applied when the danger signal is 
already shining ahead, as wait for Congressional deliberation when a 
deadly animal plague is suddenly brought into our midst. But the 
Government, as such, is not acquainted with the nature of the danger, 
or the best methods of averting it, and hence the great value of a State 
Veterinary College, which can advise and direct in such a matter. 
The veriest fraction of the $20,000,000 lost last year by hog cholera 
would have sufficiently and permanently endowed a veterinary college 
and experiment station, which would have paid the country a thousand 
times over in substantial results. In making any such movement, the 
