No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 235 



Now 1 have no si)eecii prepared; I am glad 1 haven't; I can 

 only second what has been said so ninch better than I could pos- 

 sibly say it and 1 do want to say that 1 am very glad to see so 

 many of the old friendly faces here this afternoon and I want to 

 say to these people at Conucaut Lake Exposition grounds that you 

 are welcoming some of the good old war liorses of agriculture in 

 the State of Pennsylvania, men who have worked for many years, 

 not including myself, ])lease, but quite a number of the old members 

 of the State Uoard, the old County ChairiJien that I have been 

 working with side by side for a number of j'-ears, and when you 

 welcome those old war horses in the agricultural world of Pennsyl- 

 vania, you are welcoming miglity good men. And members of the 

 State lioard. as it has been stated already, are in this work for 

 the love of the work, they do not expect any pay and they do not 

 get any pay. They spend a week, they si)end two weeks, they 

 spend a month in real, genuine hard labor in the upbuilding of 

 the agriculture of their various counties. The President of the 

 Chamber of Commerce called our s])ecial attention to the great 

 amount of water, this beautiful large sheet of water, and from what 

 he said, I think that he possibly is laboring under a misapprehen- 

 sion; he imagines that we do not have such a great abundance of 

 water over in the eastern end of the State. AVhile it is not a quiet 

 body of water, we have a broad stream about one and a half miles 

 wide flowing down through the eastern half of the State and we 

 have a great abundance of it continuonsl3^ Maybe that is explained 

 because we do not drink much of it over in the eastern part of the 

 State. But we are glad to be welcomed over here into your very 

 beautiful country west of the Alleghenies, particularly in Crawford 

 county. I think that really it is the heart of the country west of 

 the Allegheny Mountains. 



Now, I believe you are going to have a first class good meeting 

 I do not want to consume too many minutes of your time. You have 

 a splendid program. You have a free platform as was stated by 

 the Director of Institutes and that is the good part of the Farmers' 

 Institute and the Farmers' Normgl Institute, the free platform 

 where you are at liberty all the time to ask questions and I hope 

 you wdll make good use of the time and your privilege. Again I 

 thank you, thank you sincerely for the cordial welcome that you 

 have extended me. 



INFECTIOUS ABORTION 



DR. C. J. MARSHALL, State Veterinarian. 



Among the many perplexing diseases tbat afflict our livestock, the 

 subject selected for consideration to-day is one of vast economic 

 importance. It has been conservatively estimated that infectious 

 abortion exists in about 20% of the breeding herds in this country. 

 Practically 50% of the pregnant animals in newly infected herds 



