184 DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



Up to this point the statistical investigations conducted during the two preceding years 

 had resulted in the accumulation, from a wide range of territory, of a mass of facts, which 

 were singularly explicit and uniform, pointing to certain marked peculiarities of the disease. 

 About the middle of August, at the outset of the medical investigation, I made public a 

 summary of results, obtained by previous statistical inquiries, which appeared to establish 

 the following conclusions: 



1. That the disease is communicated by Texas cattle, or those from Florida or other 

 parts of the Gulf coast. 



2. That the disease itself is unknown in Texas. 



3. That the cattle communicating it are not only apparently healthy, but generally 

 improving in condition. 



4. That while local herds receiving the infection nearly all die, they never communi 

 cate the disease to others. 



5. That either a considerable increase in elevation, or a distance of two or three 

 degrees of latitude from the starting point, is necessary to develop the virus into activity 

 and virulency ; and a further progress of two degrees of latitude or a few weeks in time 

 is sufficient to eliminate the poison from the system. 



6. That Texas cattle removed to other miasmatic sections, as the Mississippi bottoms, up 

 to the thirty-sixth parallel, communicate no infection to local herds. 



7. Medication has thus far been of little avail. 



The conclusion was thence derived that the disease could not generally spread and 

 involve the cattle of the country ; that New York stock would not take the infection from 

 sick western cattle, though they might from steers recently from Texas, or from cattle cars 

 infected by such animals, and that the danger might be averted by the arrest of the Texas 

 cattle movement during the summer months, or by separating them in the transit from the 

 native cattle, and thoroughly disinfecting the boats and cars in which they are borne; but 

 that the safer plan would be to carry them to eastern markets only in winter, when the 

 virus is inert, or after a winter s grazing in safe seclusion on the border s. 



STATISTICAL INVESTIGATION OF 1868. 



In the autumn of 1868 a circular was sent to all portions of the country in which 

 the Texas cattle disease had ever appeared, in which the Commissioner of Agriculture 

 intimated his purpose to give the subject &quot;official attention until its character is definitely 

 known, and the traffic in southwestern cattle so. regulated by law as to give safety to our 

 farmers, and furnish an outlet to the surplus stock of Texas, and cheap store cattle to the 

 feeders of Illinois and Missouri.&quot; The following questions were asked : 



1. In what town or locality did this disease first appear in your county? 



2. At what date was the first arrival this season of southwestern cattle ? 



3. By what route, and from what section did they come ? 



4. What numbers of such cattle have been received in your county during the present 

 season ? 



5. What was their condition on arrival ? How many were diseased ? How many 

 subsequently sickened ? If death occurred, at what interval after sickening ; and were the 

 symptoms the same as those of native stock dying from the so-called &quot;Texas fever?&quot; 



