THE CATTLE PLAGUE IN EUROPE.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume V, Issue 214, 1 June 1877, Page 13

THE CATTLE PLAGUE IN EUROPE.

The cattle plague now raging in Europe is not a modern scourge. It was known to the ancients, and its contagious character was pointed out by Columella in his work, "De re rustica." The wars of Charlemagne spread it all over Europe in the fourteenth century, and from 1711 to 1714 its ravages were fearful. In the after periods it caused a loss to Western Europe of 1,500,000 head of cattle. In 1745 two calves bought in Holland introduced the typhus, carrying off 109,000 head of cattle in Lincolnshire alone, and other countries in like proportions. The disease, despite tre precautionary measures of the English Government, lasted till 1757, and then only because the cattle stock of England was exterminated. The cradle of the disease is in the steppes of Russia, in the rich pastures along the Dnieper and its branches, and where 8,000,000 of cattle are raised for the great markets in Bessarabia, Kenson, Podolie, &c. Thence they pass into Hungary, Central Russia, and Prussia. England, Belgium, Holland, and France have no trade in cattle with Russia. They transport live-stock, however, from Russia, excepting France, which draws its supply from Austria and Hungary. It is in this way the invasion of 1665 is to be accounted for. One hundred thousand head of cattle annually enter Galicia and Hungary from the steppes of Russia, and there the typhus is almost permanent. There is but little doubt that the cattle of the steppes can transport the virus of the plague without being struck with it themselves, down to the time when the bad nourishment and want of water, with the fatigue of long journeys by rail, cause it to burst forth. The pestilential virus has lain dormant for six months without losing its strength. The disease is highly contagious, and is communicated to dogs, sheep, and horned beasts of the same enclosures. Farm-hands have carried the germs of the disease in their clothes, and have given it to animals in their charge ; herds have even been struck with the disease from following the s&tne road which beasts had passed over an hour or two before. By a strange peculiarity, and special to this disease, the more the cattle plague is distant from its original locality the more intense is its malignity. Nothing but the severest measures against the importation of cattle from infected countries will prevent its extension. — Philadelphia Press.