282 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



dairymen an expensive lesson, and one, therefore, not soon 

 to be forgotten. I do not propose to determine whether 

 the State has dealt wisely or not with its cattle. It may 

 have done both, since it has gone from one extreme of cattle 

 inspection to another in a very short time. Those in charge 

 of the cattle interests in Massachusetts have doubtless 

 learned much in the matter. The least that the State can 

 do is to try and teach farmers the needs of the times with 

 regard to maintaining the health of cattle. We often hear 

 of the good health of the cattle in our grandfathers' times. 

 Tuberculosis was not then invented. Ill health among cows 

 was almost unknown, etc. Perhaps the immunity of that 

 generation is partly in imagination and in the forgetting of 

 many hardships during the years that have intervened. 

 Certain it is, in the human family disease was not then less 

 prevalent than now. The non-existence of tuberculosis in 

 cattle fifty years ago seems rather improbable, if we can 

 credit the statements of Oolumella, made nearly two thou- 

 sand years ago. This old Roman describes a disease among 

 cattle called "ulceration of the lungs," and says "that they 

 die not, you must bore a hole in the left ear and insert a 

 root of the lung wort." 



But, granting that bovine tuberculosis is not "a new 

 thing under the sun," there can be little doubt that our gen- 

 eration has seen far greater loss as a result than has formerly 

 been recorded. This is not because of any radical change 

 in the character of the malady, but rather in a change of the 

 conditions in which cattle are kept. That our cattle are 

 subjected to different conditions from those which formerly 

 obtained no candid observer will deny. The forcing of 

 dairy stock to abnormal production under high pressure 

 has been productive of serious results. 



Of these conditions, that of feed, which has been charged 

 with so much influence, we will pass over, merely observ- 

 ing that within reasonable limits the feed, provided it is 

 wholesome and palatable, does not have so adverse an effect 

 upon the health as is sometimes supposed. True, over- 

 crowding the cow with rich feed does often seriously impair 

 her health, but far more often this is in conjunction with 

 too close confinement. 



