226 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



insurance companies of what was going on, and it is my 

 impression that kind of business will be stopped very soon. 

 This much, gentlemen, for glanders. 



I do not know but I am taking too much time on these 

 different diseases, but the next disease I want to speak of is 

 the foot and mouth disease. I do not know whether any 

 of you ever had a case of foot and mouth disease among 

 your herds. 



A Member. ]\Iy ftither had lifty. 



Professor Stockbridge. He did, I know. I went there 

 and found it. It made its appearance here in 1878, and 

 it was all through the State. It is a peculiar disease. It 

 incubates in from three to eight days, and I will give you 

 its liistory in this State. This was the only time that this 

 disease has ever been in America. There were afterwards a 

 few cattle imported from abroad and landed in Maine, but 

 they were seized and quarantined there immediately, so that 

 the disease was stamped out, and they did not give the dis- 

 ease to any native stock ; but in the case that I speak of the 

 animals were imported to Canada, — choice thoroughbred 

 cattle. They were found to l)e infected with this disease ; 

 nobody knew what it was. It was scattered through quite 

 a wide section of country in Canada, and then it went down 

 to Albany, and went from Al])any all through this State, a 

 good deal of it on the cars ; but the farmers in the Hadleys 

 and the farmers in Berkshire County went to Albany and 

 bought their winter stock, and in the month of Noveml)er 

 it made its appearance in this Avay along through western 

 Massachusetts and out from Brighton, wherever the cattle 

 went through, nobody knowing what was going on before 

 word came to the commissioners. The disease appeared in 

 eighty different towns in the State, and it was on something 

 like three hundred farms, and nearly four thousand head of 

 cattle had it. It cost the State and private individuals more 

 than one hundred thousand dollars. 



Question. Was it a fatal disease? 



Professor Stockbridge. We did not call it a very fatal 

 disease. There were only a])()ut thirty animals that died, 

 but it ruined hundreds and hundreds of cattle, for after 

 recovering from the disease they were practically good for 



