INTERCOLONIAL NEWS.

Grey River Argus, Volume III, Issue 197, 18 April 1867, Page 3

INTERCOLONIAL NEWS.

Frightful Sheep Disease. — A frightful disease has lately 'broken out among sheep in the neighborhood of Albury, in New South Wales. The Argus says : — " The fearful Cumberland disease amongst sheep is causing the greatest uneasiness at Albury, and the necessity of adopting some general preventive measures with respect to this plague in urged by the local press. The Albury Banner thus states the matter as it has up to the present time developed itself : — ' A large flock of sheep was lately brought some seventy or eighty miles beyoiid Wagga Wagga, near Bland, Creek and which were being driven into Albury by Mr Richard .Kelly. He died on the road suddenly, and his deatli (the weather being extremely hot) was attributed to snustro'ce. His relations went out and took charge of the sheep. Between Wagga Wagga and Albury, it is stated, some thirty sheep died, and that pigs who ate the flesh also died soon afterwards. That his widow, who hehpeel to bring down the sheep, took some to Beechworth, where more died and more pigs were poisoned, aud that Mrs Kelly died there. Some of the sheep were sold in Albury, and some of these also died. Mr Lay ton, the other day, in skinning one, got inoculated with the virus, and died a terrible. death after much suffering. At Wagga Wagga, a shepherd who had been bleeding one" of these sheep was taken to --the hospital, and he died within twenty-four hours, and yesterday we learned that a butcher in Beechworth had been attacked xinder similar circutrstauces, and that, if not dead, his life is despaired of. Nor is this all. It is r - ported to \is that on a station not far from Albury, sheep have been dj'ing in twenties and thirties every nighfc. They are fat,., and appear to be healthy and exhibit no disease, but in ten or twenty minutes, after staggering, fall dead. The result is that the whole population are alarmed. People will no more think of buying and eating mutton than they would think" 'of eating arsenic or swallowing strychnia."