294 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



engendered in the stock of any farm by undue exposure, 

 want of ventilation, or confinement in damp and filthy 

 enclosures. But contagious pleuro-pneumonia, which has 

 sj'raptoms resembling those diseases, is the result of contact 

 with an animal possessing the infection, or with some object 

 he has infected, and is disseminated from animal to animal, 

 like small-pox or measles in the human family. The appear- 

 ance of lung-disease on remote and isolated farms, unless it 

 can be traced to contact with animals from abroad, should 

 cause no alarm, but should prompt their owners to a careful 

 hygienic examination of their premises, and methods of stock 

 management. So long, however, as tliis cattle-plague exists 

 in four of our sister States, and their cattle are not forbidden 

 to mingle in the great current of trade, so long there is dan- 

 ger of its dissemination along the lines of transit. Twenty 

 years ago, and when it was widely spread through the State, 

 Massachusetts " stamped " it out at an exj^ense of more than 

 two hundred thousand dollars, and not for the benefit of it- 

 self alone, but for the whole country ; and it would appear 

 that common interests, and comity between the States, should 

 induce a like action where it now exists. The ravages of 

 this disease in other countries have cost them millions of dol- 

 lars, and to prevent a like result here is an object worthy the 

 combined action of the State and National governments. 



To prevent the introduction of Spanish-fever to our herds, 

 the Legislature of 1876 enacted that no Texas or Cherokee 

 cattle should be brought into the State between the fifteenth 

 day of May and the first of November. Other States in the 

 West, where it had caused great losses, had a similar statute ; 

 but, in a contested case before the United-States court in 

 Missouri, it has during the last year been declared un- 

 constitutional, because it attempted to interdict or control 

 commerce between the States, — a power possessed only by 

 Congress. Assuming; a like result would follow in a contest- 

 ed case in this State, and that our enactment was void, repre- 

 sentations of the case were made to the Legislature at its 

 recent special session for the revision of the Statutes, and the 

 law complained of was stricken from the code. For it was 

 substituted an Act giving the Commissioners power to take 

 possession of all such cattle when brought within the State, 

 and to confine them to the premises of the railroad transport- 



