"After doing all in our power to attain the object of our journey, we went back to the port to wait for the _Schwan_, having first thoroughly cleansed the clothes we had worn during our inspection of the diseased cattle. The _Schwan_ came in shortly after our arrival, and disembarked 256 head of large cattle, 12 calves and 400 sheep, all in good condition. Mr. Philipps, the London agent of the North German Lloyd's, was on the spot, together with several reporters from newspapers, who wished to see by personal investigation how and in what condition cattle are brought from the Weser.
"We re-embarked on the _Schwan_ upon the 19th. The crew were engaged during the voyage in carefully cleansing the ship. The weather was fine, and we arrived safely at Nordenhamm upon the 21st.
"G. J. RIPPEN, "Veterinary Surgeon at Seefield.
"H. FASTING, "Veterinary Surgeon at Schwey."
Professor Simonds having had such opportunities of investigating those diseases as they existed in England and in foreign countries as were possessed only by a few Englishmen, might be permitted to offer a few observations. He had been appointed by the Royal Agricultural Societies of England and Ireland to proceed to the Continent in 1857, when there was a rumour that the disease which existed among cattle in this country at the present time was prevailing in Mecklenburg. Consuls sent despatches that the rinderpest was prevailing largely, and the Government, as a precautionary measure, closed the ports against the introduction of cattle from the Baltic to this country. He found, however, from his observations abroad that since 1817 there had been no disease of this kind westward of a line between Revel in the Baltic and the Gulf of Venice, but to the eastward of that line it had existed. He came up with the affection at the Carpathian mountains, where it was raging in 1857 just as it is raging in England at the present time. Not only had it existed there, but it had been carried into the interior of Russia in the ordinary method of the cattle trade. A person who was in the habit of purchasing cattle attended a fair and bought a number of animals, and took them to his own farm, and in the course of ten days one or two were seized with the disease, and the result was there was a gradual spread of the evil in that district. It gained ground until the Government instituted the sanitary police regulations, which, though they were such as would be considered strange in England, were, he believed, absolutely necessary for the extirpation of the plague. It was undoubtedly true that no foreign animals had been seized at our ports or in the metropolitan market; but it was not necessary for the case they had in hand to say whether the disease was or was not of foreign importation. There was this fact before them, that it was not until the month of June that the disease appeared in England. A certain number of animals came out of a diseased district. He had documentary evidence that animals came from Revel and came from the district of Esthonia. He had before him proof that the disease now in England was raging in that district. They had proof that shortly after the arrival of those cattle in England the disease manifested itself here. He admitted there were difficulties in the way of checking the importation of foreign cattle. The Government had its eyes open to the matter, and he did not think it possible for the Government to have done more than they had done or to have done more quickly what they had been doing. At this moment half the supply of the metropolitan market came from foreign countries, and he did not wish to convey any reflection by saying that this disease had its origin from abroad. He would admit that the animals from Germany and Hungary were coming in a healthy condition; but he could not admit that they came from Russia, Poland, or Galicia in so perfect a condition, because the regulations there were not sufficient to stamp out the disease. The Government had made an inquiry as to the general health of cattle on the Continent. They believed France, Belgium, Holland, Schleswig-Holstein, Oldenburg, and a large part of the Continent that supplied cattle to this country were free from disease. This went to show that we had admitted a disease not from where we received our supplies of meat, but from some other district. Then it must be associated with the fact that it came into this country when animals arrived here from an infected district in Russia. Animals from Germany and Hungary were often shipped and mixed with others from a diseased district. As regarded the disease being spontaneous, we had been free from it for twenty years.