439 
or whether they are kept on the premises of the owner. In Mecklenburg 
county no stock is allowed to run at large, and the disease existed dur- 
ing the present year, in some localities, from early in the summer, and up 
to October first by far the greater part of the country was free from it; 
while in Alamance county, where no restraint is put on the animals, the 
disease spread from one extremity of the county to the opposite in a few 
weeks. In each of these outbreaks, and, indeed, in every one I have 
observed, it is no difficult matter to find one locality where the hogs 
have nearly all died and the disease has finished its work some weeks or 
even months before, while in almost every direction, at a distance of 
five, ten, or fifteen miles, these animals are just taking the affection; 
that is, the disease has extended and is extending, and it has required 
; this length of time to travel this short distance. Can it be possible that 
an atmospheric or climatic change would travel no faster than this? 
Again, if dependent on such conditions, why do we find one township 
devastated by it and another not many miles distant entirely free from 
it? Such instances are very apparent in Haywood, Mecklenburg, Lin- 
coln, and Gaston counties at this writing, and were not less soin Bun- 
combe county in 1877. If it is claimed that this depends on the condi- 
} tion of the soil, it is only neccessary to reply that in the outbreak just 
: mentioned, in Buncombe county, there are no facts to justify such a 
theory. In Swannanoa township, which is high, rolling land, with 
very few bottoms, no swamps or malaria, and which cannot be surpassed 
for healthfulness, the loss was 60 per cent. of the whole stock; while in 
Upper Hominy, which has no advantage over Swannanoa in healthful 
location, but which is more remote from thoroughfares traveled by west- 
ern droves, the loss was only 2 per cent. It was probably entirely free 
from this disease. 
A large number of instances could be produced of outbreaks in this 
State, particularly in the western part of it, clearly traceable to infected 
droves, and this is, above all, the case with the first introduction of the 
disease. Itis difficult to establish exact dates, but all accurate testi- 
mony points to 1859 as the fitst appearance of this trouble. Somethink 
the earliest outbreaks might have been a few years before that date, but 
of this I have been able to get no evidence. Mr. Morris, of Pelk county, 
remembers that a drove stopped at his place in 1859; that seme of the . 
hogs died there of the disease, and that soon afterward this malady 
spread among most of the hogs in that loeality. This was the first ap- 
pearance of the trouble in that county. Mrs. Davidson, of Buncombe 
county, remembers that during the life of her father, who was a large 
hog-raiser, and who lived on the route followed by the droves, no hogs 
were lost by this disease, but that about the time of his death (1858) 
droves came through with sick animals, and that this was the first ap- 
pearance of the disease in that locality. Many other people who can- 
not remember dates are positive in the opinion that the disease was in- 
troduced by droves from Tennessee and Kentucky. One man remem 
bers that he was employed by the drovers to kill the animals that were 
sick and cure the meat. He also remembers that these animals had 
diseased lungs, and such a bad odor that they could scarcely be dressed. 
This was his first experience with the disease known as ‘“‘ hog-cholera.” 
Colonel Polk, cur present commissioner of agriculture, informs me tha* 
the first appearance of this disease in Anson county was in 1859; that 
it was undoubtedly brought there by western droves, and that these ani- 
mals died to such an extent that the drovers took them secretly to the 
woods and buried them under brush and rails to conceal them. A drover . 
who sold his hogs in Georgia at that time informed me that the disease 
was first introduced in that State in 1859, and that he had no doubt it 
é 
