392 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



expected, our safety seemed to require that Massachusetts 

 should be quarantined against ])oth New York and Vermont, 

 which was accordingly done, with the exception of beef 

 cattle for slaughter. Quarantine stations were established 

 at points where the different railroads crossed our State line. 

 The officers of the railroads were directed to unload all such 

 store cattle found on their trains at the quarantine stations, 

 and the town officers at the localities were directed to detain 

 and care for them at their owner's expense for ninety days, 

 unless previously released or slaughtered by order of the 

 Commissioners. On the 20th of April a cow, owned by 

 Patrick McMorrow of Jamaica Plain, and which had been 

 sick and treated by a veterinarian two months for lung fever, 

 was killed, and found by post-mortem to have had this 

 disease. This animal, also, was found to have come from the 

 West to Brighton, but further history of the animal, or the 

 origin of her disease, could not be obtained. It should, 

 perhaps, be stated in this connection that an animal affected 

 by common lung fever, consumption or pneumonia presents 

 appearances so nearly identical with those of the contagious 

 form that it is impossible to distinguish them as different 

 while the animal is living ; but by post-mortem it at once 

 becomes apparent. The history of an animal or herd, its 

 travels and associations, therefore, becomes an important 

 factor to aid in the intelligent control of the disease. From 

 Feb. 24 to April 26 we had very frequent notices of 

 supposed cases of the contagion, but examination and 

 slaughter failed to reveal its presence ; and it did not make 

 its appearance in any of the herds with which the twenty 

 cows received on the 26th of January came in contact. The 

 extent of its period of incubation is assumed to be ninety 

 days ; therefore, at the expiration of that period from the 

 time the twenty cows from Buffalo arrived, or on the 25th of 

 April, all restrictions against the movement of the cattle of 

 the State were removed. Early in August the proclamation 

 of the Governor of Illinois was received, assuring us that 

 the disease had been "stamped out" in that State; and, 

 about the same time, word was received from the officers of 

 the Bureau of Animal Industry that they had secured such 

 control of it in New York that we were no longer endauijered 



