or carelessness in burying the carcasses, the putrid forms are still preserved, and are ready, at a proper constitution of the air, or upon being uncovered, to disperse such a quantity of effluvia that all the cattle which have not had it will be liable to infection."

The success of legal measures of repression in Great Britain was foreshadowed by the result of voluntary local law. In several instances early in the season of the plague, the farmers of the county of Aberdeen, in Scotland, watchful and provident, early sought to protect themselves and repel the invader. An association was formed, participated in by all of the parishes, eighty-four in number, and a voluntary assessment of one penny per pound of the agricultural rental was made, collected at once, and four-fifths of the sum actually realized as a fund with which to compensate for animals killed. When the plague did come, the first animal infected in a herd was slaughtered before the sickness had progressed. If a second attack occurred the whole herd was immediately slaughtered. The disease appeared in seven different centres, but so thorough was the destruction that the county was cleared of the pest before the coming of winter, with the loss of but three hundred and six animals, averaging, large and small together, a cost of £10 per head.

The English people, slow to ask for restrictions of commerce, especially in food products, (and cattle particularly, of which from 5,000 to 10,000 are imported weekly,) suffered much from the hesitating, dilatory, and irregular policy of the government. Orders in council were issued from time to time regulating the movement of cattle, and prescribing various police details, the result of which was to circumscribe the powers of the inspectors, to enlarge those of local authorities, and finally to replace the latter by new local authorities, with a new sphere of jurisdiction; and between the several local authorities there proved to be no concert of action, and little prevention of disease. The Economist thus accounts for its rapid diffusion: "You could not persuade the English people to hurt themselves so much until the evil was apparent. When the disease had reached their own locality, when it got pretty near, when it had killed half the cattle of a county off, then the sluggish mass of common Englishmen would be roused and awake; but not till then. Even the distant calamities of great magnitude would not move them to the constant exertion, the perpetual watching, the diffused and never-resting care which would be needful; and as the disease now is, when its ravages were a matter of figures, and but a small matter, you might as well expect aid from the English cattle as from the English peasantry or the smaller English farmer."

The plague still continued its ravages, the government as well as people became alarmed, and a law was enacted, based upon the idea of crushing out the infection by wholesale destruction of infested herds, with partial compensation to owners.

BRITISH CATTLE PLAGUE ACT.

The existing act, as finally perfected, is of great length, and a brief synopsis of its provisions must suffice. It provides for the slaughter by the local authorities of all animals affected with the cattle plague, and for compensation to the owners equal to two-thirds of the value of each animal, not to exceed £20. Every dead or slaughtered animal must be buried in its skin, covered with quicklime or other disinfectant, and not less than six feet deep of earth. Very minute and thorough provisions secure the cleaning and disinfection of premises and clothing of attendants, and prevent the introduction of other animals for thirty days. Local authorities are empowered to require the slaughtering of exposed animals, if they see fit, and may allow the owners to sell the meat, and shall pay for the animal if the owner prefers not to dispose of it himself, such sum, not exceeding £25, as may equal three-fourths of its value. It provides

also for compensation for slaughtering by any inspector, under authority of prior enactments of August and September, 1865. It prohibits all markets, fairs, auctions, exhibitions or public sales of cattle, except markets, for the sale of animals intended for immediate slaughter. Stringent regulations are required in all markets in the metropolis, to prevent the removal of cattle.

Part second requires every person having an infected animal to give notice to the local authorities, and to keep it separate from others, and forbids its removal. from the premises, its exposure for sale, or its passing along a public highway, common, or unenclosed forest or other land.

It provides that the compensation and medical expenses shall be defrayed, two-thirds out of the local rate, and one-third from a special cattle rate, which may be levied at any interval of time not less than three months, and in amount not exceeding five shillings per head for all cattle one year old and upwards. The tenant of a farm may deduct from his rent half the amount of his rate. The law provides relative to infected places

1. That no cattle shall be moved out of or into an infected place, or along any highway within an infected place.

2. No hides, horns, hoofs, or other parts of cattle shall be removed from an infected place, unless with a license from some officer, appointed in that behalf by the local authority, certifying that such articles have not formed part of an animal afflicted by cattle plague, and have been properly disinfected, if neces

sary.

3 No dung of cattle, and no hay, straw, litter, or other articles that have been used, in or about cattle, shall be removed from an infected place. And any local authority may make orders as to the shutting up of dogs in an infected place, and the destruction of stray dogs found within or coming out of the same. As to the movement of cattle, it requires all imported animals to be marked by clipping the hair off the end of the tail, and no animal so marked may be moved from the port of landing alive; and provides that no cattle shall be moved, except by railway, after sunset and before sunrise, except within the limits of the metropolis; that no animal shall be taken into any district in opposition to the prohibition of its local authorities; or at any time between sunset and sunrise be put on a railway.

It authorizes local authorities to prohibit or impose restrictions or conditions on the introduction or removal of

1. Any specified description of animals, excepting for a distance not exceeding two hundred yards, from part to part of the same farm.

2. Raw or untanned hides or skins, horns, hoofs, or offal of animals, or of any specified description thereof, except hides, skins, horns, or hoofs imported into the United Kingdom from India, Australia, South Africa, or America.

3. Hay, straw, litter, or other articles that have been used in or about animals.

LAWS OF CONTINENTAL NATIONS.

In Russia the police regulations are very strict. On the breaking out of an epizootic immediate notifications of the police authorities are enforced, and the sheriff, with a politico-medical officer, a veterinary surgeon, repairs at once to the spot. The medical officer, after examinations, living and post mortem, defines the extent and nature of the disease, reports the facts to the local authorities, giving information of the number and breeds of the animals in the district. The local police then direct the adoption of measures of prevention. In villages within the jurisdiction of the department of crown lands, the rural police are assisted by the local department authorities.

If these local measures are not effectual, the chiefs of provinces, upon consultation with the members or inspector of the medical court, or committee of public health, devise other and more stringent means. Of the appearance, mode

of treatment, and final disappearance of the disease, the minister of the interior is fully advised.

Among the preventive means adopted in cases of cattle plague are the following: Separation from healthy cattle. Shepherds and cattle-feeders are not allowed to visit infected places. Purchases of cattle, milk, hides, or tallow, in infected districts, to be carried to healthy places, are forbidden. Persons attending diseased cattle must wash their hands in a solution of potash and vinegar, and change their clothes before approaching healthy cattle. When dead animals are removed in carts drawn by horses, care must be taken that no liquid matter is dropped. Neither skin, horns, nor hoofs may be removed from a dead animal, which must be buried deeply, far from dwellings of man and feeding-places of cattle, in open rather than wooded spaces, where they may not be liable to be dug up by wolves or other animals.

In the Netherlands, provision has been made by law for the prohibition of importation and transit of cattle and the holding of cattle markets, and regulations have been established relating to the sale, treatment, and disinfection of living or dead cattle, meat, hides, hair, wool, dung, and other offal. Any animal removed and sold, to evade the provisions of the law, may be seized and confiscated, and punishment by fine of 25 to 500 florins, and imprisonment for eight days to three months, are penalties of its transgression. A liberal indemnification is made for all animals slaughtered by order if the disease has been made known by the proprietor himself.

Stringent regulations are enforced by law in Prussia. Medical treatment is forbidden, as also the recommending and publicly advertising of remedies.

Legal measures, various in character and complete in details as experience and practical wisdom are able to suggest, are also enforced in France, Belgium, Austria, Denmark, Switzerland, Bavaria, Saxony, Hanover, Baden, and by other (and probably all) governments of Europe.

AMERICAN CATTLE IN DANGER.

It would be strange if America should escape the visitation many years. Cholera, arising in the east, has traversed Asia and continental Europe, leaped the North sea, and passed the ocean barriers repeatedly. Diphtheria and other subtle animal poisons have been disseminated over islands and continents. Deadly murrains have decimated or destroyed the herds of all nations in all ages. Apparently new forms of disease appear occasionally, destroying particular genera of animals, while others escape unscathed. This cattle plague is not altogether new in Europe, having been traced back, by characteristic manifestations, a thousand years and more, during which time at least six separate outbreaks in Britain are chronicled. America has never yet been visited, so far as is known, but who can guarantee continued immunity?

When the red men roamed the forest alone, they were free from European infectious diseases. That exemption ceased with the landing of the colonists at Jamestown, and the arrival of the Mayflower in Massachusetts bay. Our cattle have hitherto been subject, in a limited degree, to occasional epizootic outbreaks, in their comparative isolation and freedom from disease-producing influences. Importations of foreign cattle are fortunately prohibited, yet infection may come at any moment, wafted by the winds of commerce, in a bale of wool, a bag of rags, a bundle of hides, a package of horus, a crate of crockery, or in a single straw, or in the clothing of a herdsman, for it has been proved that the infection can live and multiply after many months of rest.

And if it comes, what shall hinder its sweeping the country, and destroying as many millions of dollars as would suffice to connect the Mississippi and the Hudson by a ship canal that should be ample for the transportation of the products of a continent? We have had one warning. Pleuro-pneumonia, which has

ravaged portions of Europe during the past half century, was a few years since introduced into Massachusetts; and but for the prompt and vigorous action of the legislature of that State, by which diseased and exposed animals were slaughtered and the disease thus "stamped out," the losses of cattle-owners might have been many millions of money, if not millions of cattle.

But a worse than the pleuro pneumonia is the rinderpest. In some countries the recoveries do not exceed five per cent., and (if it is not a witticism) a portion of those which recover ultimately die before they reach the butcher. Lancisi, a great Italian writer, declared that the cures spread the disease. When this disease approaches, the knife is the proper medicine, arterial bleeding the only radical cure; yet there would be hesitation here as elsewhere, and delay and paltering with remedies. Already a dozen have been proposed in advance, and a score of ridiculous theories of its nature and cure propounded; and some have recognized its actual outbreak in Pennsylvania, and others again in Kentucky. American nature is human nature, and cattle plague history would again repeat itself. As in 1750, the sixth year of the fourth visitation, which lasted twelve years in England, when people complained that the sick beasts were not killed soon enough, there would be loud outcries against the dangerous dilatoriness or reckless cupidity that hoped for cures while spreading infection. As then, after years of killing and saving, and the lamentation that "Cheshire might have saved 6,000 if the farmer at Elton had killed his cattle," there would be the same mistaken mercy mingled with wholesome severity, the same concealments and hesitation, similar declarations of the incurability of the disease and the folly of treatment, and after all, at the last record of the eventful history it would be written of some Doctor Jones or Veterinary Smith, that "a never-failing remedy had been discovered." Thus "hope springs eternal in the human breast," and the dire plague "never is, but always to be" cured.

Great Britain has enacted a stringent and effectual law, which effectually set a barrier to the regular weekly increase of attacks, and secured a constant and rapid decline of the disease. The Congress of the United States would pass no similar law for killing and compensating by wholesale. The matter has already been broached among members of Congress, and State rights have stood as a lion in the way. The subject is referred to the several States, as a matter of domestic and local concern, and here would be one great danger in the case of an outbreak in this country. Thirty-six States would have thirty-six separate and diverse laws on the subject, but for the fact that half of them would have none at all, at least for the first year or two, or until the infection was almost remedilessly spread throughout their borders.

Then if the railroad system of England, with its systematic vigilance and watchful care, is the means of extending the disease, what reeking infection might not be conveyed on our uncleaned cattle trucks and uncared-for railway cattle pens.

Scarcely a government in Europe has neglected to enact laws for arresting the spread of this fatal disease. These laws commonly have the following objects:

1. To make it the legal duty of the stock-owner to give the earliest notice of its approach.

2. To arm either the local authorities or the executive with power to isolate or slaughter herds.

3. To make pecuniary compensation for animals slaughtered. 4. To provide a supply of competent veterinary surgeons.

It is urgently suggested, in conclusion, that State legislatures take up, at the earliest possible moment, the question of permanent general enactments, applicable to all virulent, infectious, or contagious diseases, and pass such laws as the security of farm stock within the several States may require. Massachusetts has already an efficient law of this character.

DONATIONS.

Donors and their donations to the museum of the Department of Agriculture.

John Goddard..... Greensburg, Ind...

Dep't Ag're, Washington, D. C Pine leaf fibre and cloth; rice paper

U. S. consul, Sheffield, Eng. Splendid specimens China grass (Be

E.W.Rogers & Sons Whallonsburg, N. Y