352 AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 
demand greater economy of resources. Wide-spread pastures will be 
restricted by farmipg inclosures, and the ability to produce coarse beef 
at low prices, without any of the expenses of the Northern and Western 
stock-grower, and with less scientific intelligence, will no longer exist. 
The Texas cattle trade has its evils, which should be ameliorated. 
The transportation of cattle for great distances by rail involves many 
abuses. Healthy animals suddenly removed from the free range of pas- 
ture and crowded into cattle-cars, kept standing for days and nights in 
an uncomfortable posture, deprived of food and rest, worried and con- 
fused by the constant roar of machinery, cannot long preserve their 
healthful condition. In the hot summer months, bodily exhalations 
create an intensely mephitic atmosphere; the jarring, unequal move- 
ments of the cars jostle the animals against each other, injuring their 
limbs, abrading their flesh, and adding cutaneous and muscular intlam- 
mations to the other evils of this “‘ middle passage.” 
Different State legislatures have attempted to relieve these difficulties 
by special enactments. New York forbids the confinement of live-stock 
for longer consecutive periods than twenty-eight hours, without intervals 
of ten hours for rest. Inventive genius is also devising more comforta- 
ble cattle-cars. It can render the most effective service in the per- 
fection of refrigerator cars, whereby the animal may be slaughtered 
on his native soil, and the meat sent to distant markets, preserved 
by artificial refrigeration perfectly fresh and untainted. This method 
has already been successfully inaugurated in some portions of the 
country, and there is but little doubt of its general introduction when 
the requisite machinery shall have been devised and constructed. 
This improvement is now urged by that noble institution, the ““Ameri- 
can Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.” This body de- 
serves the gratitude of the public for its fearless and disinterested 
exposure of the abominations of the New York abattoirs, ventilating not 
only the cruelty to animals, but also the frauds perpetrated upon the 
public. Evils of this character, however, intrenched as they are in the 
inveterate selfishness of interested classes, can be alleviated only to a 
slight extent by moral or even legal suasion. A change in the method | 
of marketing beef will remove the abuses complained of by removing 
the opportunity for their perpetration. The public will hail with geuu- 
ine satisfaction that revolution in the beef trade which secures the 
slaughter of the animal in his native pasture, and the transportation of 
healthy beef in refrigerator cars. 
EPIZOOTIC APHTHZ:. 
NATURE OF THE LISEASE. 
This contagious malady of stock belongs to the class of zymotie 
diseases, or, in other words, it is caused, like specific fevers generally, by 
the introduction into the system of a poison germ, which propagates 
itself, and increases in the blood and tissues in a manner allied to the 
erowth of a ferment in.a saccharine solution. During this reproduction 
of the virus in such fevers, the system passes throvgh a series of suc- 
cessive stages of disease, the nature and duratiop of which are deter- 
mined by the character of the particular poison taken in, and during 
which the poison germs (contagious principles) are given off abundantly 
