EPIZOOTIC DISEASES

These are diseases which attack different species of domestic animals in the same manner that epidemics do man. These maladies ravage large tracts of country, frequently causing great mortality amongst the various animals inhabiting the localities visited by them; different animals being a ailed by different forms of epizootic disease. For instance, there is the rinderpest, or plague peculiar to cattle, the typhoid or gastric fever which prevailed so largely amongst horses in this country in 1854, and 1861 and 1862; the smallpox of sheep; the diphtheria affecting oxen, sheep, goats, and pigs; the influenza of horses, and the charbon of pigs. Dogs, cats, tame and wild birds, fish, [277] silkworms and bees, each suffers from a special variety of epizootic disease. [277] Great mortality has prevailed amongst the salmon during the present year, owing to the attacks of a peculiar white fungus, called the Saprolegnia ferox , a parasite that multiplies so rapidly as speedily to envelope any fish it attacks. Epizootic diseases are met with in most European countries. They are very common in Ru ia, where they commit great devastation amongst the horned cattle, 400,000 of which are said to die annually from their ravages. Of epizootics, Mr Finlay Dun says:—“They extend at the same time over large tracts of country, attack in a similar manner great numbers of animals, tend to a ume a typhoid form, and withstand badly all depletive treatment. They depend upon some general causes as yet unknown, but which it has usually been thought sufficient to term “atmospheric;” but are always most common and fatal amongst animals breathing impure air, densely crowded, badly fed, or exposed to cold winds; and are generally prevented or robbed of their virulence by guarding against such debilitating causes, and maintaining a high standard of health.”