492 AMERICAN CATTLE. 



breaks out, but mitigated in its virulence from the deadly mur- 

 rain of scriptural times, which was of malignant type. Pleuro- 

 pneumonia is worse and more deadly than any domestic mur- 

 rain, and has prevailed, at sundry times, to more or less fatal 

 extent in America; but the still more deadly and fatal Rinder- 

 pest has visited us but once, and that recently. 



These may be called kindred diseases, as the forms they take 

 may rage with less, or greater violence and fatality, or yield to, 

 or resist medical treatment. A brief history of the Rinderpest 

 in America, may be important for our information. We find it 

 in the " Fourteenth Annual Report of the Secretary of the 

 Massachusetts Board of Agriculture, for the year 1865," as a 

 report of a Commission appointed by the State Legislature to 

 investigate the disease. It is there given as the Pleuro-pneumo- 

 nia: 



"We may reasonably entertain the hope, that after a long 

 series of well-meant and well-directed efforts, that contagious 

 disease among cattle, known as pleuro-pneumonia, has been erad- 

 icated; while the sad experience of Great Britain in combating 

 a somewhat analagous disease, the rinderpest or cattle plague, 

 which has carried off more than two hundred thousand of the 

 finest animals, has become sufficiently well known to confirm the 

 wisdom and sound judgment of our own State authorities in the 

 course adopted to prevent the introduction and spread of con- 

 tagious diseases among our stock. 



"It Is possible that in the early stages of our efforts to arrest 

 the progress of the pleuro-pneumonia, when the disease was less 

 understood than it is now, a somewhat larger number of cattle 

 were destroyed than was absolutely necessary to secure the object 

 in view ; but no one can be so short-sighted as not to admit that 

 it was better to err on the side of safety than to run the risk of 

 incurring the losses which would inevitably have followed 

 neglect; for we know now that every conceivable expedient was 



