338 Seventeenth Annuae Repokt of the 



at the end of September. From Canada and central New York 

 it passed southward and eastward through a series of successive 

 shipments by rail, as many as 5 such separate herds having 

 passed from Albany into Dutchess County alone. (Department 

 of Agriculture Report for 1870, Washington.) This diffusion con- 

 tinued until the plague had burned itself out in the early infected 

 centers. No systematic government control was exercised. Each 

 stock owner acted on voluntary advice in secluding his stock in 

 winter quarters until the infection had passed through all exposed 

 susceptible animals, leaving them for the time proof against an- 

 other attack. In 1902 I had from stockmen most circumstantial 

 accounts of the disease in the vicinity of Boston as early as July; 

 but, accepting the statement of the Bureau of Animal Industry 

 that the first cases occurred in Chelsea in August, the disease had 

 3 months and upward of unrestricted spread in a district where 

 dairies abound and where there are frequent changes from herd 

 to herd, and also through the large stock yards at Brighton and 

 Somerville where continual shipments of dairy and stock cattle 

 were made into different parts of Massachusetts and adjacent 

 states. In the New York invasion of 1908, on the other hand, the 

 first infecting animals front Michigan reached Buffalo, October 

 23 I<m- the Monday markel "I" three days later. From October 26 

 only three rnarkel days had passed (November _', '.» and 16) be- 

 fore the state and federal quarantine orders were issued stopping 

 all movement of susceptible stock from the Buffalo yards or from 

 one place to another in the two counties first secluded by quaran- 

 tine. And, by a marvelous good fortune, no shipment of infected 

 animals during the intervening period had passed out of the 5 

 counties which wire finally quarantined. Any real winter quaran- 

 tine of these counties, therefore, involving the quarantine of each 

 herd in these counties against its fellow, could not fail to prove 

 successful in preventing all further extension of the infection. 



Ohio's escape from the plague 



It seemed at first incredible that Ohio, situated as it was in 

 the direct line of the cattle traffic from Michigan to Pennsylvania 

 and New York, could escape an invasion, and the more so as in 

 ordinary years the Buckeye State draws very largely on Michigan 

 for stockers to be fed off during the winter. Doubtless the withered 



