130 DISEASES OF SWINE AND OTHER ANIMALS. 



or whether they arc kept ou the premises qI' the owner. lu Mecklenburg 

 comity no stock is allowed to run at large, and the disease existed dur- 

 ing the present year, in some localities, from early in the summer, and up 

 to October first by far the greater part of the country was free from it ; 

 while in Alamance county, where no restraint is put on the animals, the 

 disease sjnead from one extremity of the county to the opposite in a few 

 weeks. In each of these outbreaks, and, indeed, in every one I have 

 observed, it is no difficult matter to find one locality where the hogs 

 have nearly all died and the disease has finished its work some weeks or 

 even months before, while in almost every direction, at a distance of 

 five, ten, or fifteen miles, these animals are just taking the aftection ; 

 that is, the disease has extended and is extending, and it has required 

 this length of time to travel this short distance. Can it be possible that 

 an atmospheric or climatic change would travel no faster than this '? 

 Again, if dependent on such conditions, why do we find one township 

 devastated by it and another not many miles distant entirely free from 

 it ? Such instances arc veiy aj^parent in Haywood, Mecklenburg, Lin- 

 coln, and Gaston counties at this writing, and Avere not less so in Bun- 

 combe county in 1877. If it is claimed that this depends on the condi- 

 tion of the soil, it is oidy neccessary to reply thfit in the outbreak just 

 mentioned, in Buncombe county, there are no facts to justify such a 

 theory. In Swannanoa township, which is high, rolling land, with 

 very few bottoms, no swamps or malaria, and which cannot be surpassed 

 for healthfulness, the loss was 60 per cent, of the whole stock ; while in 

 Upper Hominy, which has no advantage over Swannanoa in healthfid 

 location, but which is more remote from thoroughfares traveled by west- 

 ern droves, the loss was only 2 per cent. It was probably entirely free 

 from this disease. 



A large number of instances could be j)roduced of outbreaks in this 

 State, particularly in the western i)art of it, clearly traceable to infected 

 droves, and this is, above all, the case with the first introduction of the 

 disease. It is difticult to establish exact dates, but all acciu-ate testi- 

 mony points to 1859 as the fii'st appearance of this trouble. Some think 

 the earliest outbreaks might have been a few years before that date, but 

 of this I have been able to get no evidence. Mr. Morris, of Polk county, 

 remembers that a drove stopped at his place in 1859 5 that some of the 

 hogs died there of the disease, and that soon afterward this malady 

 spread among most of the hogs in that locality. This was the tu'st ap- 

 pearance of the trouble in that county. Mrs. Davidson, of Buncombe 

 county, remembers that during the life of her father, who was a large 

 hog-raiser, and who lived on the route followed by the dro\'es, no hogs 

 were lost by this disease, but that about the time of his death (1858) 

 droves came through with sick animals, and that this was the first ap- 

 pearance of the disease in that locality. IMany other people who can- 

 not remember dates are ])ositive in the opinion that the disease was in- 

 troduced by droves from Tennessee and Kentucky. One man remem- 

 bers that he was employed by the drovers to kill the animals that Avere 

 sick and cure the meat. He also remembers that these animals had 

 diseased lungs, and such a bad odor that they could scarcely be dressed. 

 This w^as his first experience with the disease known as '' hog-cholera." 

 Colonel Polk, our present commissioner of agriculture, informs me that 

 the first appearance of this disease in Anson county was in 1859 ; that 

 it Avas undoubtedly brought there by western droves, and that these ani- 

 mals died to such an extent that the droAcrs took them secretly to the 

 woods and buried them under brush and rails to conceal them. A droA'cr 

 Avho sold his hogs in Georgia at that time informt^d me that the disease 

 was first introduced in that State in 1859, and that he had no doubt it 



