42 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



on the watch to prevent the spread of the disease in our own 

 State. It exists all along the border of our State, in Put- 

 nam County, New York. We have had, as you know, a few 

 cases. We have been peculiarly fortunate, perhaps more 

 fortunate than any State that has been exposed in a like 

 manner. During the last season we were exposed to the 

 disease from a herd at Waterville, N.Y. We immediately 

 took the most vigilant measures to protect our people against 

 its ravages. We used every means the State gave us ; but 

 our power was limited. The president of the Massachusetts 

 Agricultural College has intimated what a State may do, 

 what Massachusetts has done. That is not Connecticut. 

 Connecticut has empowered her Commissioners simply to 

 quarantine, but has not appropriated a dollar for the pro- 

 tection or the slaughter of cattle, and, without that, the 

 disease can never be stamped out. 



But I digress. I will go back to Waterville. In that 

 herd, the fatality was about what has been intimated will be 

 the result everywhere, somewhere from twenty-five to fifty 

 per cent of loss. Nine out of that herd died. The owner, 

 finding himself with eleven or twelve more animals, followed 

 the course that most of us are more or less inclined to do in 

 such circumstances. One Saturday night, he shipped them 

 to New York, that they might land there on Sunday, giving 

 him that day to spread them broadcast. Our Commissioner 

 followed them there, and, with the aid of the New-York 

 Commissioners, they were immediately arrested, condemned, 

 and slaughtered. By that means, with the enforcement of a 

 strict quarantine, we avoided any further trouble from that 

 herd. 



Then we had two other herds just upon the line of the 

 State. In one case, the line between Connecticut and New 

 York runs diagonally through the farm of the gentleman 

 who owned the cattle. It would have been very easy to 

 have carried the contagion from one State to the other with- 

 out a united Commission. In the first instance to which I 

 have referred, the disease was communicated by a cow bought 

 by Curtis Judson, keeper of the Gramercy Park Hotel, New 

 York, and sent to Waterville. 



Thus much as to the danger of the spread of the disease ; 

 and the necessity of some action, and none other than the 



