SOUTHLAND.

Timaru Herald, Volume I, Issue 5, 9 July 1864, Page 2

SOUTHLAND.

The Times states that pleuro pneumoi ii is spreading amongst the cattle m the province, with a rapidity which sets at defiance any steps which have been taken by the Government to check its ravages. Reserves for quarantine grounds are no sooner made, and the infected cattle driven there, than, breaking bounds, they disperse m all directions, carrying disease and death into healthy herds. This is a consequence m the very nature of things. Cattle used to rim m a certain district, if driven off to another, invariably make back for their old grazing grounds on the first opportunity ; it takes time to accustom them to the new place; constant and careful shepherding to prevent them breaking away. This entails considerable expense m the employment of workmen, whose business would be, until the new arrivals became settled down m some measure m their fresh pastures, to watch constantly, even night and day. * * * Now that this scourge has gained ground so firmly, it is difficult to determine the best means of preventing its spread. There is, however another and more alarming feature. We are informed by most credible authority that, at the present time, there are at least a thousand head of cattle on the Mataura Plains, seemingly fat and well conditioned, which are all more or less diseased. It seems that, frightened at the spread of pleuro-pneumonia, the large cattle-holders are naturally anxious to get rid of their fat stock even at greatly reduced prices. A panic has spread amongst them, and all are anxious to part with so precarious a property. Numbers have been driven to town to be near the market ; if clean before, they have been mixed with diseased ones, so that now it is impossible to determine which are clean or otherwise. The botchers, not unnaturally, fearing no supervision and slaughtering at different yards at considerable distances apart, are not too inquisitive as to whether the bullock offered for sale at a low figure is quite free from disease. So long as the animal looks pretty fat, but little time is wasted m enquiring the district it came from, or whether there is any probality of its haying mixed with diseased beasts. The meat is sold at a rather remunerative price, and the customer, with every morsel he partakes of, introduces the seeds of disease, and sometimes death into his system,"