216 BOAKD OF AGlilCULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



please the Boston board of health by putting glanders and 

 farcy and rabies under its control, when already a com- 

 petent agency existed for the control of these diseases, sup- 

 ported by ample law, and stronger laws than the city board 

 of health has to sustain it. 



Tor the past year an agent of the Cattle Bureau has been 

 present at the horse auction in Lowell and examined all the 

 horses offered there at the weekly sales, with the result that 

 1 cases of glanders have been discovered and killed before 

 going on to do further mischief. Some of these animals had 

 recently passed through the auction sales stables in Boston, 

 others killed at other places outside of Boston during the 

 year were purchased at auction in Boston, yet the Chief 

 of the Cattle -Bureau has absolutely no authority to employ 

 an agent to inspect horses offered for sale in Boston, although 

 many of them go to outside cities and towns. He has no 

 authority to trace the history of a glandered horse after he 

 traces it to a sales stable in Boston, or any power to investi- 

 gate, and if he finds that the seller knew or had reasonable 

 cause to believe that a horse had glanders, he has no right 

 to prosecute him for selling such an animal. He has no 

 right to prosecute any one for removing a glandered horse 

 from Boston to another city or town, or to prosecute any 

 one for breaking quarantine by removing a quarantined horse 

 from Boston to another city or town. There is something 

 more to the suppression of glanders than the authority to 

 kill an animal because it has glanders or farcy, and it would 

 seem that the changes made in the law in 1897 and 1899 

 should never have been made. To show how soon glanders 

 develops in some of the cheap class of horse sent to these 

 sales, it is interesting to note that 2 horses found to be 

 glandered at the Lowell auction sales had been sold there 

 two or three weeks before, and at that time passed inspection. 



There was quite a discussion before the committee on ag- 

 riculture of the Legislature last winter as to whether the 

 State should or should not pay for glandered horses. A 

 change in the law to provide payment in a limited sum was 

 favored by the Expressmen's League and some stable keepers 

 and horse owners, and evidence produced to show that this 



