REPORT 



OP 



PROFESSOR GAMGEE ON THE SPLENIC OR PERIODIC FEVER OF CATTLE. 



SIR: The transportation of northern cattle into Florida, Texas, parts of Mississippi, 

 Louisiana, and South Carolina, and the traveling of southern herds across the grazing lands 

 of States northward, result in the sickness and death of the animals which come within the 

 range of a singular form of contamination. In Missouri, Kansas, Arkansas, Virginia, 

 Kentucky, Carolina, and Georgia, the so-called Spanish or Texas fever has been the cause 

 of losses prior to and since the war, and more especially during the last summer, and this 

 fact has excited the most virulent opposition among the stock-raisers of those States to the 

 driving of Texan steers across the prairies. The nature of this feeling is indicated by a let 

 ter from Mr. 8. Morgan Welch, of Waverley, Missouri, to the Prairie Farmer of the 26th 

 of September, 1868, in which he says: &quot;Talk to a Missourian about moderation, when a 

 drove of Texas cattle is coming, and he will call you a fool, while he coolly loads his gun, 

 and joins his neighbors ; and they intend no scare, either. They mean to kill, do kill, 

 and will keep killing until the drove takes the back track ; and the drovers must be 

 careful not to get between their cattle and the citizens either, unless they are bullet 

 proof. No doubt this looks a good deal like border-ruffianism to you, but it is the way 

 we keep clear of the Texas fever ; and, my word for it, Illinois will have to do the same 

 thing yet. Congress ought to do something in regard to this stock. Very stringent laws 

 were passed in regard to the rinderpest, and yet it is scarcely more fatal than Texas fever, 

 only the latter is not contagious among our native cattle. Texas stock should not be 

 allowed to cross the 35th parallel of north latitude alive.&quot; 



With rare exceptions the States of Illinois and Indiana were not visited with splenic 

 fever prior to 1868, and the great reason for this is that southern stock has been slaugh 

 tered in the west by butchers and packers in the winter months, and has not been purchased 

 in large quantities by cattle dealers and graziers, to fatten on the western prairies. But 

 steers in Texas can be had in their prime for eight to ten dollars in gold. It has been re 

 cently computed that there are five million head in that State alone, and that the net 

 yearly increase, after allowing a discount of twenty-five per cent, for loss by disease and 

 casualties, amounts to seven hundred and fifty thousand head. 



It is impossible to exaggerate the sufferings Texan cattle endure in being transported 

 by. steamers from the Texan coast to New Orleans, and thence to eastern or to western 

 cities ; and it is, likewise, difficult to draw too vivid a picture of the perils and anxieties 

 of a drover s life. Energetic frontiersmen in small bands, armed to the teeth, collect a herd 



