LOCAL & DISTRICT NEWS.......#3 TRAVELLING SHOWS AND THE SMALLPOX. At the Kendal Board of Guardians, on Saturday, DR. PAGE, medical officer of health for the district, called the attention of the Board to information he had received to some travelling caravans, containing persons suffering from smallpox, and had passed through Sedbergh in Yorkshire, from the town of Kirkby Stephen, in Westmorland, apparently on their way to Kendal. DR. PAGE stated that he hoped it was not true, as he had heard that at Kirkby Stephen a medical man, finding the vans were infected, ordered them away out of the place. All the caravans in Kendal on Saturday (of which there were a great many) were inspected; so that it would appear the plague-stricken show had sought quarters elsewhere. Nevertheless, the medical officer advised the Board, who, by a strange anomaly in the Public Health regulations, are the only responsible parties in such cases, in the borough of Kendal, to take precautions. It was known that caravans had come from Preston,, where the disease was very prevalent; and as the persons connected with these establishments did not always sleep in the vans, they might easily spread infection, not only in one town, but in every place which they happened to make their location. It appears the police have no power to inspect the vans. FRESH OUTBREAK OF FOOT AND MOUTH DISEASE. This disease has again made its appearance in Westmoreland, after an interval of several months, during which the cattle in the county were quite clear of all contagious diseases. On yesterday week, we reported that seven cows and one pig had become affected with the foot and mouth disease, and on that day, a cow at Kirkby Lonsdale also took it. This cow had been pasturing on an island in the River Lune, and as many cattle have been driven through the district to the late cattle fairs at Sedbergh, Milnthorpe, and Kirkby Lonsdale, and as one herd was driven to the Lune to drink, it is probably that the disease has been imported. The diseased cow is isolated, and every effort will be made to prevent the further spread of the disease. The regulations and restrictions with respect to isolation are now repealed by the Privy Council, and consequently the authorities are almost powerless to deal with an outbreak of infectious disease. Cattle may be moved about or allowed to herd with healthy stock, in fact a farmer may do as he pleases with respect to his diseased cattle, so long as he does not take them upon a highway or show them at a market or fair. As farmers chafed so very much under the restrictions we have referred to, can they not voluntarily do something among themselves to obviate the necessity of compulsion ? A VALUABLE HEIFER KILLED. A mysterious and singular catastrophy took place on Saturday last in a field near Penrith. MR. F. WILLIAMSON, of Steadman House, had a number of valuable short-horn cattle pasturing in an inclosure called Mires Hill, near the Penrith Workhouse; and skirting the land is a hedge belonging to MR. CLARK, in which grew an ash tree of large dimensions. About two o'clock in the afternoon smoke was observed rising from the neighbourhood of the tree by MR. JOSEPH FENTON, of Penrith, as he was passing along the highway; but the circumstance does not seem to have occurred to him as singular, for he neither went to ascertain the cause nor named what he had seen to any one. So far as we are able to learn no other passerby noticed anything peculiar until eight o'clock in the evening. MR. WILLIAMSON's son, who at that time was returning from business in Penrith, perceiving that the tree had fallen from the place where he had seen it standing in the morning, went into the field, and discovered that the lower part of the trunk had almost been burned through, and one of the large limbs resting upon a fine three-year-old shorthorn calving heifer. The ribs were completely smashed, and the whole body was pounded nearly to a jelly. When found, the animal must have been dead for some time, as the carcase was quite cold. The trunk of the tree was still smouldering when MR. WILLIAMSON reached the place; but no indication could be discovered, nor indeed has anything yet transpired, upon which to form a conclusion as to whether the tree had been fired by an accident or premeditatedly.