506 AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 
The report on the Texas or splenic fever extends over twenty pages ; 
and, after giving many facts as well as theories, which cover the whole 
range of speculation on this subject, the commissioners come to the fol- 
lowing conclusions, which they assume as proved by their observations, 
though they state that the second and third pojnts may bear further 
discussion : 
1. That isolation of native stock from Texas herds is imperatively demanded during 
the hot summer months. 
2. That one day’s contact, or the crossing of the trail of the Texas herds by native 
cattle, does not infect the native stock, but continuous contact and grazing after them 
is necessary to produce the disease. 
3. The native cattle do not contract the disease by being fed with the Texans in dry 
lots. 
4, That the disease is not disseminated by Texas cattle that have been wintered in 
Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, [linois, or Iowa, nor has the disease been known to prevail 
after the autumnal rains and frosts. 
The trade in Texas cattle is one of vast importance, not only to Illi- 
neis but to the whole country. Texas wants a market for her untold 
thousands of cattle, and the Western States want this stock to graze 
their millions of acres of rich native grasses, and to give them a market 
for their millions of bushels of surplus corn. Asa means of preventing 
the Texas fever, stock-growers are advised to keep a barrel of heavy coal 
oil, which has from 8 to 12 per eent. of carbolic acid; also a quart of liquid 
carbolic acid, which contains 90 per eent. of pure acid; the latter only 
is soluble in water. The heavy oil should be sprinkled on the floors of 
the barns, and especially on the droppings, as fast as made. The wood- 
work of the stalls should be covered also with the liquid substance, 
spread on by a common whitewash brush, and the stock be kept iso- 
lated. Nostrange animal should be allowed to come on the place, or have 
access to running water visited by other animals. The dung and urine 
of sick animals are the chief means of propagating the contagion ; it 
is often diffused even by the dung which adheres to the shoes of at- 
tendants. . 
Western sheep farmers are urged to pay greater attention to root 
crops, Which can be grown freely throughout the West and which would 
materially improve the luster of the wool. A practical sheep farmer 
says, paradoxical as it may seem, “if sheep are fed with all the roots 
they can eat, they will consume double the quantity of corn and put on 
three times the weight they will do with corn alone.” They should be 
pastured on tame grasses, the higher and more rolling the ground the 
better. No breed can be kept on prairie grass without becoming thin 
and worthless. Many failures in this business might have been avoided 
if this fact had been recognized. The ‘bush sheep,” as those are called 
which feed on this grass, can be distinguished in the pens at Chicago 
almost at a glance; and the character of the country and the extent 
to which tame grass abounds therein, are indicated by the sheep that 
are driven from it. ; 
Mr. Meehan, in an essay on the diseases of the pear, says debility is 
the cause of much of the trouble; and this want of vigor is produced 
by excessive summer and root pruning, which so weakens the wood-pro- 
ducing principle as to induce inflorescence, according the well-known law 
that nature always makes an effort to reproduce the plant, in proportion to 
its danger of death. When pear trees produce flowers and no fruit, and 
the blossoms have had no external injury, it may be safely assumed 
that the soil is deficient in nutritive elements, that too much summer 
pruning has been done, or too many surface roots destroyed by a per- 
sistent stirring of the soil. Pears cannot be grown to great perfection 
