94 AGRICULTURE OF MAINE. 



in right where we have taken out the diseased cattle we are 

 subjecting the new cattle to the disease. The mistake has been 

 made, of putting cattle into the old barn without killing the 

 germs. It is just as important to disinfect the barns that have 

 been infected with the tubercle bacillus as it is to get out the 

 diseased cattle. It is not an impossible thing to do. It is not 

 always an easy thing to thoroughly disinfect an old, rough, open 

 barn. It requires a great deal of painstaking effort, and there 

 may be conditions under which the cheapest way to disinfect is 

 to burn, but that probably is not often true. We have found, in 

 practice, this method to be very satisfactory, for disinfection : 

 The barn is first emptied of stock, fodder and utensils, as far as 

 the disinfection tvould hurt them, then it is cleaned bv sweeping 

 it and washing up the manure in the tie-up, cleaning it about 

 as water will clean it ; then it is thoroughlv sprayed from the 

 ridgepole to the basement of the cellar with corrosive sublimate 

 solution, one part of the sublimate to looo parts of water. Cor- 

 rosive sublimate is as effective a disinfectant as we have. What- 

 ever germs are touched by the solution are destroyed. The only 

 point to be observed is to touch them all, and this is not always 

 easy. But with a force pump on a barrel and two careful work- 

 ers, one. to work the pump and the other the spray nozzle, the 

 bam can be literally washed all through with this corrosive 

 sublimate solution. And we believe that, considering cheapness 

 and effectiveness, this is the best method to be adopted. Possibly 

 there is another method that may supersede this because of the 

 ease of applying it. It has only recently become available. For 

 disinfecting houses formaldehyde gas has been used for a num- 

 ber of years, and in limited areas, that can be closelv sealed up, 

 this formaldehyde gas has be.en a cheap and effective means of 

 disinfecting. It has not been available for barns because we had 

 not any good method of generating the gas fast enough. We 

 cannot close up a large barn quite as tight as a sealed room, and 

 there are more ways that the gas will get out. And if we can- 

 not get a good deal of it in a room at one time it is not effective. 

 There has recently been discovered a method of generating it 

 more rapidly, so that choosing a calm day, closing our barns as 

 carefully as they can be closed, stuffing rags into the cracks, clos- 

 ing the windows and battening the doors, the gas may be gen- 



