14 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



Agricultural Department, State House, > 

 Boston, December 24th, 1863. j 



To His Excellency John A. Andrew : — 



Dear Sir, — The disease commonly called pleuro -pneumonia, 

 still exists among the herds of some twelve or fifteen towns of 

 this Commonwealth. The importance of an early consideration 

 of the facts connected with its introduction and spread, can 

 hardly be overstated, whether we regard it in a pecuniary or in a 

 sanitary point of view. If we are to give up all effort to eradi- 

 cate it, we must settle down into the conviction that we shall 

 soon find ourselves in the condition of those countries in Europe 

 where this disease exists, and from which it is now, probably, 

 too late to attempt to get rid of it, owing to the fabulous 

 amount of the cost. 



What is that condition ? The most moderate estimates fix 

 the loss by pleuro-pneumonia alone, in the British Isles, at ten 

 millions of dollars a year. The value of cattle lost by that 

 disease amounts to two or three times the value of all the cattle 

 imported. More than a million head of horned cattle died of 

 pleuro-pneumonia in the six years ending with 1860, of a value 

 of at least sixty millions of dollars. Nor is there any falling 

 off, but on the other hand a rapid increase, so that in 1862 the 

 prevalence of the disease, owing to sales in the markets and at 

 the fairs, was greater than it had ever been known before. In 

 one week, about the time I was in London, more than nineteen 

 tons of diseased meat were discovered in that market alone. 



These are startling facts-, but they do not represent the whole 

 truth. They fall far short of it, for we must consider the con- 

 tamination of the animal food and of the dairy products of the 

 kingdom, and the almost universal demoralization among a 

 very large class of farmers, dealers and butchers, affecting the 

 whole community, consequent on the reckless traffic in diseased 

 meat. 



" Horned cattle," says a recent Report made to the Lords in council 

 of Great Britain, " horned cattle affected with pleuro-pneumonia, are 

 much oftener than not, slaughtered, on account of the disease, and when 

 slaughtered are commonly, except their lungs, eaten ; and this even 

 though the lung disease has made such progress as to taint the carcass." 



"At present there is a keen competition for a cow affected in the last 



