THE LUNG PLAGUE OF CATTLE. 31 



But no country invaded by this pestilence has ever been offered a 

 fairer chance to exterminate it; no country in which the affection has 

 been so long neglected lias been so mercifully dealt with as the United 

 States; and therefore to no country will more blame justly attach if the 

 plague is yet allowed to overstep all limits, and to give rise, to a general 

 and irremediable infection. 



YEAKLY INCREASING DANEGRS FROM LUNG PLAGUE. 



Kvery country which harbors a single case of lung plague is in im- 

 minent peril of its general diffusion and uncontrollable sway. It is the 

 most consummate folly to speak as many do of only a few cattle being 

 infected among our forty millions. It is because we have forty millions 

 of sound cattle that we are called upon to protect them from the plague. 

 affecting the thousand, the hundred, or the single animal. Equally ab- 

 surd is the comparison between the hundred and thirty thousand cattle 

 exported to Great Britain, and the paltry ten or twenty that it is 

 claimed were suffering from the lung plague on their arrival. The Brit- 

 ish Government do not forget that it was a single importation from Hol- 

 land which infected Ireland in 1839, and that in spite of the absence of 

 all subsequent importations that island has since remained one of the 

 most badly infected countries of Europe. It was but a single beast 

 that carried to Cape Town the infection which for twenty-seven years 

 has devastated the whole of South Africa. It was a single cow which 

 carried to Australia that virus which has ravaged her herds for twenty- 

 two years. It was the single cow which, entering the Brooklyn stable 

 of Peter Dunn, introduced the infection which has never since left our 

 eastern seaboard. It was the four Dutch cows imported into Boston 

 which spread this infection over a great part of Massachusetts, and cost 

 the commonwealth five years of arduous effort to effect its extermina- 

 tion. We may see in these examples, and above all by the terrible devas- 

 tations of the plague on the open pastures of South Africa, and Australia, 

 what would overtake us if but one infected beast were carried out to our 

 unjenced ranges in Texas, or other western States and Territories. Except 

 under the influence of some great war, or of some newly-opened and gigan- 

 tic trade, like the English importations after the passage of the Free Trade 

 act. this disease rarely invades a new territory by the arrival of hordes 

 of infected animals. On the contrary, it has come silently in the single 

 unsuspected beast to those countries in which it has wrought the great- 

 est ruin. Keeping this in mind, we can the better estimate the increase 

 of our peril to-day in comparison with that of the past. 



INCREASED IMPORTATION OF CATTLE ENHANCES OUR DANGER. 



The transatlantic trade in cattle in either direction is of comparatively 

 recent development. When the stock was brought in sailing ships, 

 which were weeks in place of days on the passage, the extra provision, 

 time, and care necessary, and the prolonged danger of the voyage, all 

 contributed to deter the importer. But of late years the employment 

 of steamships, and the greatly increased interest in such breeds as the 

 Ayrshire, the Jersey, the Hereford, the Holstein, and the Polled Angus, 

 have led to a great increase in our cattle imports, and have correspond- 

 ingly increased the danger of infection. 



Many of our great importers have their stock-farms in the western 

 States, so that these importations are especially liable to carry infection 

 westward toward the Plains. 



