Commissioner of Agriculture , 275 



The manure is always contaminated by the infected saliva 

 swallowed and in some instances receives besides the concentrated 

 virulent serum of blisters which have formed along the course of 

 the bowels. The urine, like the milk, produced in an intensely 

 vascular organ is usually charged with live microbes that have 

 escaped along with the secretion. Manure heaps, accessible to 

 other stock or laid on land open to them, become active causes, 

 and liquid manure draining from one pasture to another, or into 

 small or sluggish streams running through pastures, or used for 

 watering stock, leads to disease diffusion. 



Fodders and other articles soiled .by such manure, or by other 

 products of the diseased, infect. Hay, straw, alfalfa hay or meal, 

 cornstalks, grain, brewers' grains, bran, cottonseed meal, oilcake, 

 pea-vines and pods, beets, turnips, apples, potatoes, fruits, pump- 

 kins, squash, the side products of sugar and canning factories, 

 ensilage, etc., may thus become vehicles of infection. 



Birds, especially those living in or adjoining cattle stables or 

 yards, poultry, pigeons, sparrows, hawks, eagles, owls, and, above 

 all, buzzards and carrion crows, are particularly to be dreaded. 

 Feeding in the stalls, mangers and racks, scratching in the litter, 

 wallowing in dust baths, the birds load their feet, legs, bills and 

 plumage with the virus, and, flying to a distance, deposit the same 

 in other premises, among other susceptible stock. Buzzards, in 

 particular, living on carrion and scenting it from a long distance, 

 are preeminently infection bearers, finding with unfailing cer- 

 tainty every infecting carcass and carrying off on their bills and 

 claws and in their intestines much infecting material to be dropped 

 at distant points to the detriment of local stock. 



Vermin, rabbits, rats, mice, weasels, minks, wood chucks, 

 skunks, squirrels, etc. have been often incriminated as carrying 

 the infection and in any campaign against foot and mouth disease 

 they must be taken care of. 



Insects of various kinds are equally dangerous, especially in the 

 summer season and in southern latitudes. Stable flies mostly 

 breed in manure and other organic refuse, so that dung heaps and 

 swarms of hot weather flies are mutually and collectively danger- 

 ous. Invertebrate skin-parasites (lice, mites, ticks) passing from 

 animal to animal are especially dangerous, as their bites give 

 ready channels for the entry of the microbe into the system. 



