CATTLE PLAGUE, or RINDERPEST, a disease which affects ruminants, but especially bovine cattle; indigenous to the East, Russia, Persia, India, and China, and imported into Britain only by contagion of some kind; the most serious outbreaks were in 1865 and 1872.

There is no broken glass, there are no painful bottoms of bottles to disturb my ruminant quiet.

" And you sit ruminant and take no action, But daylong watch the aeroplanes at play, Or contemplate with secret satisfaction Your fellow-men proceeding towards the fray; Your sole solicitude when men report There is a shovel short, Or, numbering jealously your rusty store, Some mouldering rocket, some wet bomb you miss That was reserved for some ensuing war,