CONTAGIOUS DISEASES AMONG CATTLE. 293 



at first thought, if you use one of the forked hoes to stir up 

 the ground. 



The Board then adjourned sine die. 



ANNUAL EEPOET OF THE COMMISSIONEES ON CONTAGIOUS 

 DISEASES AMONG CATTLE. 



The Commissioners are gratified to be able to report that 

 the year 1881 has been one of general health with the neat- 

 stock of the State, and that our stock interests have been 

 unusually prosperous. In our last Annual Report the atten- 

 tion of the Legislature was called to the fact that conta- 

 gious pleuro-pneumonia existed in several sections of the 

 country, and that it was alleged in England that cattle ex- 

 ported from the port of Boston had been found infected with 

 it, causing apprehension among our stock-owners lest there 

 might be an outbreak of the disease here, and throwing sus- 

 picion upon Boston as a cattle-shipping port. Mention was 

 also made of investigations then in progress by agents of the 

 United States as to the truth of the allegations. These in- 

 vestigations have been continued ; and it is now believed that 

 while this disease exists in certain sections of New York, 

 New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia, not a 

 case of it has ever occurred west of the Alleghanies, and that 

 the suspected cattle from Boston were affected by ordinary 

 lung-disease, induced by foul air on shipboard. But the ap- 

 prehension of danger from the disease remains in full force ; 

 and as a result the Commissioners are frequently notified, by 

 private persons and municipal officers, of supposed cases of it. 

 In July the selectmen of Lanesborough, in Berkshire County, 

 requested us to examine the herd of a farmer of that town 

 who had lost five animals and had three others sick, the 

 symptoms of which were thought to resemble those of this 

 disease. The herd was examined, and a post-mortem made of 

 the animals, and the trouble found to be sporadic pneumonia. 

 There have been other cases of lung difficulty, but none of 

 them of the contagious type. The Commissioners entertain 

 the opinion that there is little danger of the appearance of 

 this malady in localities remote from the great lines of trans- 

 portation. Inflammation of the lungs, or tuberculosis, may be 



