§ MR. LONGsaid, he would beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Homo Department, Whether the Government were taking any steps to ascertain if the disease resembling the Rinderpest which has recently been observed among sheep in different parts of the United Kingdom be really the Rinderpest, or not.
MR. H. A. BRUCEsaid, in reply, that during the last six months the attention of the Veterinary Department of the Privy Council had been specially directed to this subject, and during that time twenty-six different phases of the outbreak of what was supposed to be the rinderpest had been reported in eleven different counties, as many as nine occurring in the county of Nor folk alone. The conclusion at which the veterinary surgeons of the Privy Council had arrived at, was that the disease was identical with the rinderpest among cattle. The soundness of this conclusion was greatly doubted in various parts of the country, but especially in Scotland. He would, therefore, briefly state the grounds upon which the veterinary surgeons had arrived at their conclusion. The first experiment made was upon a sheep confined in a pen in which a cow had died of the rinderpest, and the sheep was attacked by the disease and died. The next experiment was more conclusive. At the Veteri- 138 nary College some sheep were inoculated with a quantity of rinderpest virus, when they were invariably attacked, and all, excepting two, died of what appeared to be the rinderpest. The two surviving sheep were then inoculated with smallpox virus, but that, disease immediately seized them, and from this fact it was clear that the malady which attacked them in the first instance was not smallpox. The local inspectors consequently had been directed to deal with diseased sheep in the same way j as with cattle attacked by the rinderpest. He might add that the disease did not appear to spread from sheep to sheep as readily as it did among cattle. In Scotland sonic attempts had been made to convey the rinderpest to sheep by exposure under circumstances calculated to induce it, but unsuccessfully, and hence arose the peculiar disbelief in that country that the disease now afflicting the sheep was the rinderpest.
§ MR. LONGsaid, he would beg to ask, what steps the Government have taken to check the spread of the disease?
MR. H. A. BRUCEreplied that the steps taken were identically the same with those which had been taken with regard to cattle.