BUREAU OF ANIMAL INDUSTRY. 359 



it would seem necessary to engender whatever toxic substance may 

 be formed in diseased corn by inoculating growing or maturing corn 

 with known varieties of fungus, to feed this diseased corn to horses 

 under the same conditions that check horses receive normal grain, 

 and take note of any difference in its effects on the animals. 



The evidence brought forth this year in the letters received at the 

 bureau seems to indicate more strongly than ever that the trouble lies 

 in the feeding of diseased and damaged feed, but why it should 

 attack a number of horses in a particular stable practically within 

 the space of a few days does not seem clear. In this respect the 

 disease acts more like a malady generated by infectious microorgan- 

 isms as distinguished from the disease-producing microparasitic 

 organisms of plants. It would not be strange, though, to find that 

 organisms parasitic to plants are also parasitic to animals, as their 

 manner of action in the vegetable and animal kingdoms are closely 

 allied. 



In advising means of relief it was insisted upon that the first and 

 principal measure to adopt was to make a complete change of feed 

 and water, both to be procured from unquestionably pure sources. 

 Cleansing and disinfecting the stables was advised. These measures 

 when faithfully carried out absolutely check the development of 

 additional cases of the disease upon the affected premises. 



MYCOTIC STOMATITIS. 



Reports of a disease which very closely resembled foot-and-mouth 

 disease of cattle, and which for that reason caused considerable alarm 

 among cattle owners, have reached this bureau, coming at first from 

 Florida, Georgia, South and North Carolina, and later from Virginia, 

 West Virginia, Maryland, and Tennessee. 



In order that no infectious malady like foot-and-mouth disease 

 should be permitted to become established and scattered, veterinary 

 inspectors of the bureau who assisted in the eradication of the plague 

 from Pennsylvania and New York in 1908 were detailed to investi- 

 gate several of the outbreaks which had appeared among the cattle 

 in the South. They found that the disease was due to eating moldy 

 forage; that it was not contagious; that hogs running with the dis- 

 eased cattle did not become affected; that only a small portion of the 

 cattle in the herd developed the disease; and, finally, that the 

 vesicles which are so characteristic of foot-and-mouth disease failed 

 to appear in any of the animals. Complete information regarding 

 the nature, cause, and treatment of this disease is contained in Bureau 

 of Animal Industry Circular 51. 



SWAMP FEVER. 



The experiments of the past year have substantiated the fact that 

 an immunity against swamp fever exists in some horses, and that 

 (his niay be largely increased by means of successive injections of 

 virus, each larger than the preceding. During the year four horses 

 have received and withstood intravenous injections of virus which 

 were suflicient in each case to have killed a large number of non- 

 inimune animals. In a case of natural infection, which was obtaiiu'd 

 from the field and used in experiments during the year, remarkable 



