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showing total exemption from leanness, fifty counties of the State of Iowa report 
“very good;” a few others in equivalent terms, with no county acknowledging 
inferior condition. The long drought of last autumn in the Ohio valley so 
injured late pasturage as to affect injuriously cattle and sheep in a large area, 
and to carry the injury to a certain extent through the winter ; and in some places 
cattle suffered from scarcity of water through the same cause. In the New 
England States the winter was also very favorable to health and growth. To 
some extent sheep suffered from the neglect which invariably follows depression 
and temporary unprofitableness of any agricultural interest in this country. In 
the southern States both cattle and sheep were affected, more or less seriously, 
by the invariable neglect and utter lack of shelter to which they are subjected. 
It is well known that no provision, either of food or shelter, is made for stock 
in the more southern States, with very rare exceptions, and to a less general 
extent this may be said of the northern and western States; and yet, in many 
cases, especially where cattle have wintered in canebrakes, they have come out 
fat in the spring. A larger portion came from their winter quarters of fence 
corners or old fields, lean, hungry, even emaciated, while the bones of many others 
strew the waste places on which they have starved. 
The mortality resulting from exposure, starvation, and other common forms of 
disease, makes a considerable aggregate of loss; sometimes but two or three per 
centum, in some localities five, and occasionally ten, and even twenty per centum 
of the total number of cattle and sheep in the township or county. ‘The occurrence 
of epizoétics and contagious diseases often sweeps off a large portion of the stock 
of whole neighborhoods. In the item of swine twenty-five per centum of loss 
from hog cholera is not unfrequent in a county, and fifty per centum has been 
reported to this department in several instances. 
Notwithstanding the fact that prevailing diseases have been less fatal and 
general than in previous seasons, cattle have wintered much more successfully 
than in former years. The aggregate losses of farm animals of all kinds for the 
past twelve months could not be covered by fifty millions of dollars. 
The Spanish fever, communicated by Texas or Gulf coast cattle to those of 
the country through which they pass in travelling northward, and which has 
proved so fatal for several years in T'exas, Arkansas, Missouri, and Kentucky, 
has been less destructive than usual the past year, in consequence of the restrict- 
ive or prohibitory measures adopted by citizens of the border, yet its ravages 
have been continued in several counties in Missouri and Kansas, and in Barton, 
Newton, and Towns counties, Georgia. The loss in a single season has exceeded 
$200,000 in one sparsely settled county, from this cause. ‘The disease is 
peculiar—fatal in almost every case; is highly contagious, while the animal 
communicating the contagion appears to be exempt from disease and improving 
in flesh ; and it yields to no remedies, and is but slightly modified by treatment. 
A lung disease, locally characterized as pleuro-pneumonia, has been prevalent 
in the vicinity of Baltimore, in eastern Pennsylvania, and, to some extent, about 
Washington and Alexandria. 
Abortion in cows has occasioned no inconsiderable loss ; -more severe in New 
York and Vermont than elsewhere. Local investigations have been made, as 
yet without conclusive results. 
A disease in Nassau county, Florida, has swept away twelve per centum of 
the cattle, and in Baker county, in the same State, 2,000 died last spring. In 
several counties of North Carolina, and in Charlton county, Georgia, an unknown 
disease has destroyed fifteen per centum. 
A great variety of diseases has attacked sheep, destroying not less than a 
million in number, in addition to a large percentage of lambs lost by exposure 
or from other causes. 
Horses have fallen victims to many named and unknown diseases in all sec- 
ions of the country. In Gates county, North Carolina, the loss is reported at 
