96 CONTAGIOUS DISEASES OF DOMESTICATED ANIMALS. 



three days after they arrived on the place. About a week after I ob- 

 tained the above history Mr. Keith's hired man tokl me that only 4 or 

 5 of the 8 head bonght subsequent to the outbreak of tlie disease be- 

 came affected. I also learned from Mr. Keith that in the early part of 

 March he received the report published b^- your Department for the 

 year 1880 and 1881, which contains a brief history and description of the 

 foot-and-mouth disease; he read it carefully, and then made his first 

 examinations of the mouths and states he found the conditions to accord 

 exactly with the descriptions there given. 



Mr. Keith had auotherlot of cattle, numbering 40 head. These were 

 two-year-old steers and heifers, and a few cows. They were kept in a 

 timber lot, separated from the yearlings by an ordinary rail fence, and 

 run into a stalk field and received the same kind of wild hay as the 

 yearlings. These cattle were bought on or about the 1st day of IS'ovem- 

 ber. On the 28th of February the first case of sickness appeared in 

 this herd, 15 or 20 of which manifested symptoms of the disease (March 

 10). Nearly all of these cattle were in excellent growing condition. 



On the 13th I separated all of the well cattle from those showing anj^ 

 evidence of the disease on the Keith farm, and had the sound ones cor- 

 raled by themselves. I recorded the temperature of a nuaiber of the 

 yearlings which were diseased, which registered as follows : 103.8°, 103°, 

 103.2°, 104°, 104.8°, 105°, 104.8°. A number of the milder cases regis- 

 tered 100.3°, 100.2°, 101.80,100°, 101.5°, 101°, 100.4°, 102°, 101.5°, 100.2°, 

 102°, 101.0°, 101.5°, 101.2°, 101°, 101.2°, 100.8°, 100.2°, 101.2°, 102°, 

 102.2°. (Here I broke my thermometer). This was quite a warm day, 

 and I noticed an increase of temperature of nearly 1° over the tests of 

 the 9th and 10th on the same animals. 1 found, out of 118 animals then 

 on the place, 74 affected ; of these 2 will lose all four of their feet ; 4 

 have lost both hind feet; 9 have each lost one hind foot; 1 four-year- 

 old cow has lost both hind feet and one front toe : 2 lost each one toe ; 

 3 are affected in one foot; 6 in two feet, and 1 in three feet, all of which 

 will probably lose the parts affected. The rest were lame in various 

 •egrees. 



During my two weeks' observations among these cattle I found only 

 the one case (the yearling red steer) which I could consider in any man- 

 ner a recent case. ^ 



On this day (the 13th) I also examined the pond of water from which 

 the cattle were in the habit of drinking, but found nothing contained 

 in it to which T could attribute the origin of the disease, and from the 

 history which I was enabled to obtain I could not discover any origin 

 by contamination with foreign cattle. Yet it appeared to me that this 

 outbreak was very evidently not so contagious as tlm foot-and-mouth 

 disease is known to be, and I began to have very grave doubts about 

 its being contagious at all, or its being the genuine epizootic aphthje. 



On the 11th, in company with Mr. J. W. Beard, Judge Thatcher, and 

 Don. Eli K. Titus, 1 drove out to the farm of Mr. Beard, and made a 



