CATTLE DISEASE. 233 



Mr. Chenery's farm is so situated that very little communication 

 has existed between his cattle and those of otliers, but on the 29th 

 of June, the very day on which the cow died which Mr. Checnery 

 believes to have been the first victim of the disease ; (the death of 

 the first two he ascribes to injuries sustained during the voyage ;) 

 he sold three Dutch calves to Curtis Stoddard, a young farmer of 

 North Brookfield. On their way thither in the cars, one was no- 

 ticed to falter ; soon it became quite ill, and Mr. Leonard Stoddard, 

 father of Curtis, took the calf home with him to care for it, and 

 placed it in a barn in which he hept forty head of cattle. It grew 

 worse, and in a few days the son took it back, and in about ten 

 days it died. In about a fortnight the disease appeared in the herd 

 of Leonard Stoddard, and one after another of his animals sickened 

 and died. In November, and for reasons independent of the dis- 

 ease, young Stoddard sold the larger portion of his herd, reserving 

 nine of the most valuable animals. This sale scattered eleven in 

 various directions, which carried the infection wherever they went, 

 and one of them is said to have infected more than two hundred 

 others. Without a single failure the disease followed these cattle. 



A yoke of oxen from the herd of Leonard Stoddard was employed 

 in a team of twenty-three yokes gathered from various quarters to 

 move a building from Oakham to North Brookfield. One pair of 

 these oxen has, since then, so changed owners that it has not been 

 traced, and nothing is known of its fate ; but in every other instance 

 it is known that the animals took the disease. 



Without dwelling upon numerous other cases in which contagion 

 can be traced with equal distinctness, it is sufficient to say, that no 

 case is known to have occurred where communication with diseased 

 cattle cannot be traced ; and it is believed that nowhere in Europe 

 has there been an opportunity of obtaining so convincing evidence 

 of its contagious nature as in Massachusetts. 



As with all other contagious diseases, both among men and 

 brutes, some individuals are found to be less susceptible to the 

 contagious influence than others, and some are not afiectedby it at 

 all ; and doubts have arisen in the minds of several European 

 writers on this point, the weight of opinion being, however, very 

 strongly in favor of its contagious nature ; but we submit that the 

 facts in Massachusetts are such as to prove it beyond a reasonable 

 doubt. We find the disease to be not only contagious, but insidious 

 and deceptive, malignant and fatal. Insidious, inasmuch as it often 

 creeps upon an animal so stealthily that it is difficult, and some- 



