NEWS OF THE WEEK.
STILL plagues and rumours of plagues. The event of the week is the demand of the Irish people for a prohibition on the im- port of cattle. A pest in America attacks all animals, the murrain was discovered among the live stock on the Great Eastern, and the papers are choked with reports, speeches, and lengthy letters, all on the same subject. There is a great deficiency nevertheless of trust- worthy facts, and a total absence of remedial suggestions, while the disease itself is described in half a dozen different ways. The only result as yet educible from the discussion is that the causes which generate typhus generate also the Rinderpest, namely, bad food, bad water, overcrowding, and imperfect ventilation. The cholera has not arrived, and a gleam of hope is afforded by the fact that this year it has not, as usual, marched straight from the south-east to the north-west, but has circled the basin of the Mediterranean. It may therefore stop there.
