STATE INSPECTOR OF CATTLE. 383 



Canada East, are perfectly well known, so that there is no doubt, 

 and can be none, in the mind of any intelligent man, that it is 

 a foreign and imported disease. 



It is evident that no amount of effort or expense to eradicate 

 so troublesome a disease, and to prevent it from obtaining a 

 permanent lodgment in our midst, should be regarded as too 

 great a price to pay for exemption. 



The experience we have had in the introduction of two serious 

 and contagious foreign diseases, with the delays of necessary 

 legislation and the immense losses and public disaster due to 

 such delays, suggest the importance of appointing a competent 

 State Inspector of Cattle, with an adequate salary, whose duty 

 it shall be to visit all parts of the State, examine all cases of 

 supposed contagion, and report the facts for the prompt infor- 

 mation of the government. Had such an officer existed in 

 1859, he would have saved the Commonwealth enough to pay 

 his salary for twenty years, and a vast amount of suffering and 

 loss on the part of individuals besides. Had such an officer ex- 

 isted in 1870, he would have saved the community enough to 

 have paid his salary for ten years at least, and probably much 

 more, as the end is not yet. 



Now it requires no great amount of foresight to see that we 

 cannot expect the general exemption from contagious and infec- 

 tious diseases among stock which generally prevailed in New 

 England previous to the introduction of pleuro-pneumonia. 

 Europe is suffering the loss of millions every year from such 

 diseases, and the chances of having some one or more of them 

 landed upon our shores are very great. We should place our- 

 selves in a position to grapple with them more promptly and 

 more intelligently than it has been possible in the circumstances 

 in which we were placed on the sudden breaking out of those 

 we have had occasion to know so much about. To be fore- 

 warned is to be forearmed. I feel quite confident that a thor- 

 oughly competent Cattle Inspector, cooperating with an intelli- 

 gent Board of Cattle Commissioners, would be of great service 

 to the farming community, and give us an immense public 

 advantage in grappling with any newly imported contagious 

 disease among stock. 



The suggestion in regard to Farmers' Institutes, made by the 

 Board of Agriculture at the annual meeting and to be found on 



