e sources of our cattle supply, and occasion
losses that can be estimated only in hundreds of millions of dollars.

The experience of all countries into which this disease has gained
access appears to prove that there is only one way of getting rid of
it--namely, the immediate killing of all infected cattle, and the
thorough disinfection of the premises in which they are found.

The disease is purely infectious, and is never found in regions where
it has not gained a foothold by importation. Palliative measures have
in every instance failed to eradicate the disease, and are only
justifiable, as in Australia, after the plague has reached dimensions
utterly beyond the reach of any process of extermination.

Professor Law, of Cornell University, one of our best informed
veterinary surgeons, most emphatically opposes every attempt to
control the disease by quarantining the sick or by the inoculation of
the healthy. "We may quarantine the sick," he says, "but we cannot
quarantine the air." To establish quarantine yards is simply to
maintain prolific manufacturers of the poison, which is given off by
the breath of the sick, and by their excretions, to such an extent
that no watchfulness can insure against its dissemination. Besides,
the expense of thorough quarantining operations would amount to more
than the value of the infected animals whose lives might be saved
thereby. Inoculation is still less to be tolerated at this stage of
the pest.

The Professor says: "Germany, Holland, Belgium, France, and England,
have been treating the victims of this plague for nearly half a
century, but the result has only been the increase of disease and
death. Our own infected States have been treating it for a third of a
century, and to-day it exists over a wider area than ever before.
Contrast this with the results in Massachusetts and Connecticut, where
the disease has been repeatedly crushed out at small expense, and
there can be no doubt as to which is the wisest course. As all the
plagues are alike in the propagation of the poison in the bodies of
the sick, I may be allowed to adduce the experience of two adjacent
counties in Scotland when invaded by the rinderpest. Aberdeen raised a
fund of L2,000, and though she suffered several successive
invasions, she speedily crushed out the poison wherever it appeared by
slaughtering the sick beasts and disinfecting the premises. The result
was that little more than half the fund was wanted