SECRETARY'S REPORT. 21 



the disease than to suffer the loss he would, if he accepted the 

 appraisal. Fourteen of the thirty-five slaughtered hy the Com- 

 missioners were more or less diseased ; two of them would 

 probably have died. 



Up to this time not the slightest evidence has been found that 

 the disease had been brought to the island from other herds ; 

 and yet several of the daily papers of Boston published articles 

 calculated, if not intended, to lead the public to believe that the 

 disease had been traced to a yoke of oxen bought of a man in 

 New Hampshire, who, four years ago, sent the disease to 

 Quincy. It is true that the lungs appearing to have been long- 

 est affected were taken from a yoke of oxen Mr. Payson bought 

 last May of a man bearing the same family name of him who it 

 is said sold the cattle which caused the trouble at Quincy in 

 1861. But it is also true that the oxen bought by Mr. Payson 

 had stood in the same stable, eaten at the same rack, drank at 

 the same trough, worked in the same field, and been with 

 through the entire summer, three or four other yoke of oxen, 

 all of which were killed, and no trace of the disease found. It 

 is also true that they had never been with any other cattle of 

 the diseased herd ; were kept in a barn separated from them by 

 a distance of several rods, and the only possible exposure there 

 could have been from them was in that they all drank at 

 the same trough, but never at the same time. It is also true 

 that Mr. Payson had worked these oxen through the entire 

 season without having had the least idea of their having been 

 diseased. He says that some time during the summer one of 

 the oxen did not thrive as well as he thought he ought to have 

 done, and he ordered a little more grain put into his food. 

 These facts are worth noticing, as tending to show the value of 

 such cattle for work. Still, again, it is true that the butcher 

 employed on this farm says that he killed an animal from this 

 herd more than a year ago whose kings were affected in pre- 

 cisely the same way that those were which the Commissioners 

 decided had the pleuro-pneumonia. But his story was not 

 believed. Ah no ! for it ran counter to the popular theory in 

 regard to the disease. The tale of any old gossip, nay, even the 

 " heard tell " which dame Rumor so generally employs, is suffi- 

 cient to prove that the cattle at the Box Tavern were the means 

 of giving the disease to Smith's herd. But here, a man who 



