EEPOET OF THE SECEETARY. 165 



shipments of sheep affected with that disease. Federal inspectors 

 were placed at the principal feeding points of all the railroads lead- 

 ing to market centers with instructions to inspect all shipments of 

 sheep, and if any were found affected with scabies to supervise their 

 dipping and treatment or allow them to proceed to a point where 

 they could be dipped under Federal supervision. Later on this 

 inspection of sheep was extended to the points at which the sheep 

 originated and were accepted for interstate movement. 



While this plan reduced the trouble and was more satisfactory to 

 the sheep growers and transportation companies than the stock-yards 

 inspection, still it did not eradicate the disease on the range to the 

 extent that was hoped for. Accordingly, in 1901 a Federal quarantine 

 was placed on all the territory west of the eastern border of North 

 Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas, 

 which included an area of 1,853,811 square miles. A plan of coop- 

 eration was arranged by the Department of Agi-iculture with the 

 sheep sanitary commissions of several States providing for the inspec- 

 tion of all sheep and the proper treating of all flocks of sheep found 

 to be affected with or exposed to disease. This plan was found to be 

 very effectual and was taken up by other States as soon as State laws 

 could be obtained under which the department could cooperate. 



As a result of work under this plan a large area was in 1907 re- 

 leased from Federal quarantine on account of the nonexistence of dis- 

 ease, and from that time until the present there has been released an 

 area comprising 1,171,590 square miles. This leaves only 682,221 

 square miles still in quarantine, and in this area sheep scabies exists 

 to a very slight extent. As illustrative of this point it may be stated 

 that when the eradication work was first taken up in New ]\Iexico, in 

 the spring of 1907, 48 per cent of the 4,500,000 sheep in that State 

 were diseased. As a result of State and Federal cooperation and 

 the annual dipping under Federal supervision of all sheep within the 

 State, the inspection of sheep in the spring of 1912 showed the exist- 

 ence of less than 1 per cent of disease. 



Contrary to predictions made by many woolgrowers, sheep scabies 

 has within the last 10 years been practically eliminated from the 

 United States, and as a result the sheep industry is in a very much 

 more prosperous condition than when a heavy loss in the product of 

 wool and mutton was each year experienced as the result of sheep 

 scabies. 



CATTLE MANGE. 



In 1904 it became evident to the department that cattle scabies or 

 mange existed quite extensively in the United States, especially in 

 the territory west of the Missouri River and east of the Rocky ISIoun- 

 tains. Accordingly, regulations tending toward the control and 

 eradication of the disease were promulgated, and the areas where 



