SPLENIC OR PERIODIC FEVER OF CATTLE. 113 



referred to above, had crossed the prairie in wliich the Parish Grove, ' 

 Illinois, cattle, numbering five hundred, had grazed. Within seven or 

 eight days after the last herd of five hundred cattle had reached Parish 

 Grove from Tolono, the Illinois cattle began to die. Fifteen car loads 

 of these had just been sent by rail to Chicago ; and, of the remaining 

 number, few survived. I inspected four sick steers, and it was evident 

 that the malady would destroy nearly all the Illinois stock. On an 

 adjoining farm Mr. Edward Sumner had nearly one thousand head of 

 northern cattle, among Avhich the disease had appeared. 



On the lith of August we visited Mr. Joseph Heath's farm, near 

 Oxford, Indiana, and found there one thousand one hundred Texan cat- 

 tle which had been purchased at ISTew Orleans and Tolono. These had 

 communicated disease over the road they had passed, and Mr. Heath's 

 native stock, numbering seventy or eighty, were dying fast- We exam- 

 ined three alive, and dissected two, showing all the indications of splenic 

 fever. 



On the next day, at Eeynolds, we visited a herd of over two hundred 

 Texan steers, which had arrived on the 27th of May; and disease 

 appeared at Reynolds the beginning of June. One car load of the ani- 

 mals was unloaded at Chalmers, and driven onto J. M. Bunnell's pasture, 

 at Reynolds. Thej^ remained there only two days ; but, five weeks after- 

 wards, the disease appeared, and killed the whole of Mr. Bunnell's stock, 

 amounting to eighteen head or thereabout. The bulk of the Texan cat- 

 tle were sent to Kenton's i)asture, three miles from Reynolds, where they 

 were mixed with seventy-three head of native cattle. Of these, at the 

 time of our visit, from fifty-five to sixty had already died, and others 

 were sick. Cattle on the west side of the track at Reynolds were safe ; 

 but cattle east, between the station and Kenton's pasture, had died. 



It is worthy of special mentiou here that, for the first time, the trans- 

 I)ortation of Texan cattle was established in 1868 from New Orleans, by 

 steamboats up the Mississippi to Cairo; and thence, via the Illinois Central 

 road, to the pastures of Illinois and Indiana, having heretofore been sent, 

 since the war, from New Orleans up the Mississippi to Louisville, Ken- 

 tucky, with the same results as at Cairo. The first lot of Texan cattle 

 was landed at Cairo on the 23d day of April; and between that time 

 and the 1st of August, when the railway peremptorily refused to trans- 

 port any more stock, about sixteen thousand animals j^assed from the 

 south on that route. At Cairo the splenic fever appeared about the end 

 of May, or beginning of June; at Farina, early in July; at Tolono, on 

 the 20tli of July ; and thence, at later periods, usually dating five weeks 

 from the time the Texan cattle were driven onto the roads and i)astures, 

 where disease afterward a])pcared. The majority ot the cattle, amount- 

 ing ])robably to ten thousand, were handled by the railroad ]»eoi»le at 

 Tolono; and Mr. Charles Troyford, of that place, who had lost forty- 

 eight out of ninety-eight Illinois cattle by the disease, at the time of oiuv 

 visit, informed me that he had not seen a single Texan steer diseased, 

 8 



