202 DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



of those States were for the first time occupied by cattle direct from Texas. The deaths 

 numbered about 5,000 in Champaign County, Illinois; 1,500 in Warren, 600 in Benton, 

 and 400 in Jasper, in Indiana; and many counties in these and other States were involved 

 to a less extent. The mortality of 1868, reported by our returns, amounts to at least 

 15,000 cattle, involving a loss of not less than $500,000. 



13. While meat of diseased animals can never be deemed wholesome food, the milk 

 and flesh of cattle affected with this disease do not generally cause immediate sickness.* 



From these characteristics of this climatic disease it is clear that it can never involve 

 in general destruction the cattle of the country by successive &quot;generations&quot; of the virus, 

 as in the case of the European rinderpest, and that its ravages may be easily confined to 

 circumscribed limits, if not prevented altogether, by judicious legislation which shall not 

 interfere seriously with the freedom or the profits of the cattle trade. 



J. R. DODGE. 

 Hon. HORACE CAPEON, Gommissioner. 



* Of the testimony bearing upon this point, that of Mr. Eaton, in charge of the Brondlaml farms of Mr. Alexander, in 

 Champaign county, Illinois, is very strong. He states that 140 head of native cattle died there in 18G8 from Texa-- fever, and 

 among them nearly all the cows on the place, whose milk was used with apparent impunity until they ceased to give milk; the 

 calves sucked as long as their mothers could stand, and in one instance a calf sucked three cows alternately until eacli died ; and 

 in some cases the hogs consumed the carcasses of dead cattle. Not n single case of disease or injury resulted from the use 

 ot meat or milk. 



