Healthiness for Cattle.

The healthiness of British Columbia has already been stated to be a great characteristic. I said at page 13, that the climate was good for "beast" as well as "man." I was not using rhetoric in so speaking, but had in mind the immense advantage of healthy herds to the province, and to the North American Continent. Glance over the world. Europe is alarmed at the page 61 spread of virulent epizootics. The Steppes of Russia are the seat of the rinderpest. Cattle bred there, and fattened in Hungary and elsewhere, are widely distributed over Europe. They reach London by rail and steam-boat. In addition to the terrible rinderpest, the English farmer also has the "foot-and-mouth disease" to contend with.

In the United States, the "Spanish Fever" or "Texas Cattle Disease" has been long known and dreaded by owners of herds in Missouri and Kansas, and to some extent in Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia. It became unusually serious in the track of Texas cattle beyond the Mississippi in 1867 and 1868. It broke out in Illinois in June, 1868. For a long time the Eastern States of the Union thought little of it, but when a new channel for the Texas cattle trade was opened, and the river steam-boats landed their living freight in the heart of the West, the ravages of the strange disease extended rapidly, carrying infection along the pathway of transportation to the seaboard, filling the public mind with alarm for the safety of farm stock, and even exciting apprehensions that the public health might become involved in the future progress of the disease.

I here again call attention to what I believe is a fact, namely, that British Columbia is probably the healthiest country in the world—for man, for beast, for tree.