384 RErORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF AGRICULTURE. 



one or mure of tnem suffered from a mild attack ; at any rate, those 

 shoats iutroduced the germs of the disease into Mr. Millers herd, be- 

 cause soon after their coming swine plague made its appearance in a (so- 

 called) spoiadic form. Whether one of the new shoats or an aniaial be- 

 longing to the old herd was the first victim Mr. Miller does not remem1}er. 

 A few words concerning Mr. Miller's farm and swine yard will be neces- 

 sary. His farjn consists jof 320 acres of unduhiting prairie, divided by 

 Sugar (Jreek into two parts, and his swine jard is large, slo]ies a little 

 towards the creek, and contains several hog sbeda and covr sheds, wliich 

 are covered with old straw. The losses during the winter, or until 

 spring, were not very severe, only now and then a few animals died, but 

 in the spring, after the sows had farrowed, Mr. Miller lost a great many 

 or most of his young pigs, and only a few of his older hogs, sojuething not 

 very strange if it is taken into consideration that the season, a cold win- 

 ter, had not been favorable to a rapid and vigorous i)ropagation of the 

 infectious principle, and that young pigs not only possess the greatest 

 susceptibility and succumb to the slightest attaek, but also have for ob- 

 vious reasons far more chances to become infected than older hogs. As 

 soon, hovfever, as the heavy spring rains set in the disease ceased to 

 make much j)rogress — at any rate, from May till August but few new 

 cases and few deaths occurred. The ])ouring rains, it seems, washed 

 away most of the disease germs into the creek, and the current carried 

 them off. But in the early ])art of August, as soon as the season for 

 heavy dews arrived, the disease almost at once commenced to spread 

 very rapidly, and the swine died very fast. Mr. Miller-s whole herd con- 

 sisted of 240 hend, and 237 died ; only three survived or remained ex- 

 empted. At that time no other case of swine plague existed in the whole 

 neighborhood, and, according to the best information 1 coidd obtain, 

 there was none Vt'ithin twenty miles. Soon, however, the disease com- 

 menced to spread from Mr. Miller's herd to those of his neighbors, fii'st 

 to the herd of his neighbor towards the north — the prevailing wind was 

 from the south — then all around, and finally over the whole township 

 and beyond. In November, 1878, Mr. Miller, when he had only three 

 hogs lei't, bought again thirty-two head. These, too, ver}^ soon became 

 infected, and commenced to die at the rate of one, two, and three a day. 

 On December 29, fourteen had died, two died that day, and most of the 

 others were sick and died afterwards. The fluctuations in the progress 

 of the plague in Mr. Miller's herd may seem to be strange at a first view, 

 but if all circumstances are taken into consideration, they become very 

 interesting, and contribute very much to a better understanding of the 

 nature of the disease. 



Another case, which shows how easily swine plague may be commu- 

 nicated, may also be worth relating. Pat Murphy lives li miles south 

 of Gai3 Grove. Up to January 2, he had lost live hogs out of a herd of 

 ten head : se\cn had been sick, but two had recovered. Mr. Murphy's 

 place, although on a public road, v/hich, however is but very little used, 

 is rather secluded. He made the following statement, which scarcely 

 needs any comment : About ten days or two weeks before his hogs 

 showed any symptoms of disease, a wiigon loaded with several carcasses 

 of dead hogs on the way to a rendering establishment passed by his 

 hog lot adjoining tlie road on the east, and separated from it only by a 

 fence. Whether Mr. Murphy's hogs became infected by the passing of 

 the wagon with the dead hogs — the wind was from the west and blew 

 the emanations of the latter into the liog lot — or not, is a question diffi- 

 cult to decide. Ojie thing, however, is certain, Mr. Murphy's hogs were 

 the first ones that were taken sick in his immediate neighl3orhood, and 



