112 DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



hoctie; or, in other Avoids, of the ill effects of prolonged starvation and 

 ill usage, which had permanently arrested the functions of assimilation. 

 The Texan cattle were intermixed in the i»astnres of Brondlands witli 

 about six hundred native animals. All but two hundred and eighty of 

 these were soon sent to eastern markets, and those which remained with 

 them began to die on the 2Gth of July. They were then phujed on green 

 corn; but they continued to sicken and succumb to the disease, until 

 one hundred and ninety-eight of all kinds, including an old yoke of 

 Texan steers which had been some time on the farm, had been buried. 

 At the time of my visit, the mortality was raging at its highest point, 

 and men were busy, from sunrise to sunset, skinning, digging graves, 

 and burying. Infornuition afterwards received was that one hundred 

 and fifty of the cattle sent to New York died before they arrived there, 

 and the rest were sent to the rendering tanks. 



Colonel Sullivan, of Twin Grove, Vermillion County, 111., purchased 

 five hundred Texan steers at Cairo, on the 24th of May. They remained 

 healthy, but communicated disease to forty Illinois steers and twenty 

 heifers and cows. The disease appeared at Twin Grove on Tuesday, 

 the 2Sth of July. Of the Texan steers three have died as the result of 

 accident. The next group of southern cattle, which came under special 

 observation, was that of J. A. Harris, near Champaign. He had eightj'- 

 five head of southern cattle, purchased last fall. There were with 

 them thirty-eight Illinois steers, and this herd of one hundred and 

 twenty-three had grazed together the entire season. On the 15th of 

 July they were placed on pasture over which a herd of Texans had 

 been driven on the 15th of June. On the 3d of August the Illinois 

 began to die; and, in four days, twenty out of the thirty-eight were 

 buried. The eighty-five southern cattle remained in perfect health. 



Tliis special immunity of the cattle imported from the south indicated 

 that they had overcome the influences which operate, however mildly, 

 to the prejudice of their health in the south. 



On the 13th of August we visited Hickory Grove, near Oxford, Indi- 

 ana. There were there one thousand animals, which had been imported 

 in the fall of 1807, and had caused no disease either in transit or on the 

 farm. On the 1st of June, 18()8, two hundred and sixteen head Avere 

 purchased, which came from New Orleans and Memphis ; and, on the 

 12th of July and the 8th of August, two separate droves of one thousand 

 head were taken on the farm from Tolono, The condition of the whole 

 of this stock Avas as perfect as any grazier could desire. Many of them 

 Avere quite fit for the butcher; and those ])iir('hiised lastAA^ere in a thriA'- 

 ing condition. Tiie last two droA'es communicated disease on their trail ; 

 but, being by themselves at Hickory Grove, had no opportunity of 

 inflicting any damage. 



At Parish Grove, adjoining the last named fiirm, a herd of about fiA^e 

 hundred Texan cattle had just been imported from Tolono. It Avas said 

 that the cattle, on their Avay from Paxton to Hickory GroA^e, in July, 



