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contents of a privy. The washings from the manure are frequently
allowed to run oyer the yard or into the street. The grams on which
the cows are fed are usually kept until they are sour and give out an
offensive smell. In 17 sheds the cows drink distillers' wash, which
is kept in uncovered receptacles, and is very stinking. In addition,
there is often vegetable matter lying about the yard in a rotten state.
In 15 of the sheds pigs are kept as companions to the cows. Some of
the animals are kept very clean, being curried and attended to in the
same way as horses. In many instances, on the contrary, they are
fearfully neglected, and their coats are either one entangled mass of
filth, or else are nearly free from hair owing to a diseased state of the
skin.
The majority of the cows are kept in the sheds through the
year; some, however, especially in the North of the Parish, are sent
out to grass during the summer months.
What are the effects of such a condition of things as I have described
? It might be suspected that animals thus kept would bo
very liable to the inroads of disease, and experience has fully confirmed
the suspicion. Many of the London cowkeepers within the last
twenty years have been nearly ruined by the ravages of disease
amongst their cattle. One gentleman, who keeps a large number of
cows, informed me that in one year he lost more than ninety. Another,
who kept about fifty cows lost three hundred in six years; he has
sent away as many as twelve in the week with the disease. Another,
who keeps four or five hundred cows, does not consider it bad luck to
have to part with two cows weekly through the year on account of
sickness. I do not mean to say that cattle diseases never prevail in
the country ; but even there cattle are not always kept in an unexceptionable
manner. Dr. Greenhow, in a recent Report to the General
Board of Health, on murrain in horned cattle, says, "the pulmonary
murrain does not appear to be more prevalent in London than in the
country." There is, however, the utmost difficulty in judging of the
extent and fatality of cattle diseases in London as compared with the
country, on account of the general practice adopted by dairymen with
their cows when ill; they very seldom submit them to treatment,
but so soon as the milk fails send them to market, or sell them to
parties who go round to obtain such animals.
In relation to this subject may be mentioned with advantage the
conclusions at which the Cattle Insurance Companies have arrived.
They charge for insuring dairy cows in the country from 6d. to 7½d.
in the pound, whilst for dairy cows in London they charge from 1s. 6d.
to 2s. in the pound, "dependent on mode of lodgment and general
management," so that they consider the risk on town cows to be three
times as great as that on country cows. They will not hold themselves